Historical figures of the Gordon Museum
Important figures in the history of the Gordon Museum include –
Robert Gordon
The Lawyer, Robert Gordon (1829-1918), was the initial benefactor of the Gordon Museum, giving a sum of £45,000 to Guy’s medical School in the 1890s. Nearly all the amount was given for the benefit of pathology.
Born in Dumfries, schooled locally, Robert Gordon then entered the office of lawyers Messrs. Reid Irving Co in Liverpool. Anxious to go to America, in 1849 he joined the offices of Messrs. Maitland, Phelps & co as a clerk, rising to partner within three years and there he remained until 1884. While living in New York he became an early trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1884 Gordon returned to England to continue working. In 1898 he became Governor and generous benefactor of Guy’s Hospital and medical school. The Gordon Lectureship in experimental pathology, founded in 1889, was the first endowed lectureship at Guy’s. A new pathology block completed in 1909 was financed by an anonymous donor and a contribution from Robert Gordon. The other notable gift was that of the Gordon Museum. The Museum was opened in 1905.
[Top of Page]
Thomas Hodgkin
Thomas Hodgkin (1798-1866) was drawn to medicine when articled to an apothecary as a young man. He began his studies by spending a year on the wards at the United Hospitals of St Thomas’ and Guy’s before entering the medical school at Edinburgh.
He qualified in 1823, having taken a year out to visit Paris, where he met Laënnec, the inventor of the stethoscope. Hodgkin was an early advocator of the stethoscope and whilst still a student he delivered a lecture in the instrument at a meeting of the Guy’s Hospital Physical Society, where it was initially received with scepticism.
In 1825 Hodgkin was appointed Lecturer in Morbid Anatomy at Guy’s and the first curator of the Museum, then the anatomy museum. He seized the opportunities the post offered, giving the first systematic lectures on morbid anatomy in England and performing autopsies. In 1829 he catalogued the Museum’s contents, demonstrating the influence of disease on the body’s organs and tissues. His work at Guy’s was to earn him his reputation as one of the leading pathologists of his time.
Hodgkin’s most important contributions to pathology were his original observations on the biconcave shape of red blood cells, the striation of voluntary muscle, incompetence of the aortic valve and acute appendicitis. However, his name is most widely known through his eponymous disease. In 1832 he published On Some Morbid Anatomies of the Absorbent Glands and Spleen, a description of seven cases of enlargement of the lymph glands and spleen. Hodgkin’s name was attached to this condition by Guy’s physician, Samuel Wilkes (1824-1911) who making similar, independent observations in 1865, became aware of Hodgkin’s work. We now know that Hodgkin’s seven cases included tuberculosis as well as Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
[Top of Page]
The Gordon Museum Curators
-
Thomas Hodgkin 1825-1837
-
Thomas Wilkinson King 1837-1847
-
John Birkett 1851-1852
-
Samuel Osborne Habershon 1853 -1856
-
Walter Moxon 1865-1873
-
Charles Hilton Fagg 1873-1882
-
Sir James F Goodhart 1882-1887
-
George Newton Pitt 1887-1889
-
Lauriston Elgie Shaw 1889 -1904
-
John Fawcett 1904-1913
-
Robert Davies Colley 1913-1946
-
Keith Simpson 1946-1965
-
SJ De Navasquez 1965-1970
-
John Maynard 1970-1996
-
Sebastian Lucas 1996 -
-
William Edwards [dates]
[Top of Page]