Victor Horsley

Sir Victor Horsley
Born	Victor Alexander Haden Horsley (1857-04-14)14 April 1857 Kensington, London, England
Died	16 July 1916(1916-07-16) (aged 59) Amarah, Iraq
Education	Cranbrook School, Kent University College London
Known for	Pioneering work in neuroscience
Medical career
Profession	Surgeon, physician
Institutions	University College Hospital Brown Institute National Hospital for Paralysis and Epilepsy
Sub-specialties	Neurosurgery
Research	Epilepsy myxedema cretinism trigeminal neuralgia
Awards	Knighthood Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh (1893) Royal Medal (1894)

Sir Victor Alexander Haden Horsley FRS FRCS (14 April 1857 – 16 July 1916) was a British scientist and professor.

He was born in Kensington, London. Educated at Cranbrook School, Kent, he studied medicine at University College London and in Berlin, Germany (1881) and, in the same year, started his career as a house surgeon and registrar at the University College Hospital. From 1884 to 1890, Horsley was Professor-Superintendent of the Brown Institute.

In 1886, he was appointed as Assistant Professor of Surgery at the National Hospital for Paralysis and Epilepsy, and as a Professor of Pathology (1887–1896) and Professor of Clinical Surgery (1899–1902) at University College London. He was a supporter of women's suffrage and was an opponent of tobacco and alcohol.

Personal life

Victor Alexander Haden Horsley was born in Kensington, London, the son of Rosamund (Haden) and John Callcott Horsley, R.A. His given name, Victor Alexander, was given to him by Queen Victoria.

In 1883, he became engaged to Eldred Bramwell, daughter of Sir Frederick Bramwell. On 4 October 1887, Victor and Eldred married at St. Margaret's, Westminster. They had two sons, Siward and Oswald, and a daughter, Pamela.

He was knighted in the 1902 Coronation Honours, receiving the accolade from King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace on 24 October that year.

Horsley was a champion of many causes. One of his primary life crusades was the temperance movement. Having observed that many injuries admitted to the hospital were due to alcohol, Horsley threw himself into becoming a temperance reformer. He soon rose up to the position of vice president of the National Temperance League and the president of the British Medical Temperance Association. In 1907, along with Dr. Mary Sturge, he published a book on alcoholism titled Alcohol and the Human Body.

According to his biographers, Tan & Black (2002), "Horsley's kindness, humility, and generous spirit endeared him to patients, colleagues, and students. Born to privilege, he was nonetheless dedicated to improving the lot of the common man and directed his efforts toward the suffrage of women, medical reform, and free health care for the working class (...) An iconoclast of keen intellect, unlimited energy, and consummate skill, his life and work justifies his epitaph as a "pioneer of neurological surgery".

Medical career

Victor Horsley

The blue plaque to Victor Horsley on Gower Street in London

In June 1886, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and, in 1891, jointly with his brother-in-law Francis Gotch, delivered their Croonian Lecture on the subject of the mammalian nervous system. In 1893, he was awarded the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh. A year later, in 1894, he won the Royal Medal for "his investigations relating to the physiology of the nervous system, and of the thyroid gland, and to their applications to the treatment of disease".

Horsley, who had been a keen rifle shot when serving in the Artists' Rifles as a medical student, also investigated the effect of gunshot wounds on the brain, experimenting with animals provided by a butcher and using the recently issued Lee-Metford rifle. He concluded that the immediate cause of death that follows was due to respiratory failure, not heart failure.

He authored the book Functions of the Marginal Convolutions (1884) and, as a co-author, Experiments upon the Functions of the Cerebral Cortex (1888) and Alcohol and the Human Body (1902).

Political career

Horsley was a Liberal Party supporter and contested the December 1910 General election as a Liberal candidate for the London University seat. The Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society campaigned against his election because of his involvement with vivisection. Following the election, he was adopted as prospective Liberal candidate, first for Islington East and then, in 1913, for Harborough in Leicestershire. Harborough was a Liberal seat and a general election, expected to take place in 1914 would most likely have seen him elected to parliament. However, he resigned as prospective candidate, citing opposition to his views on women's suffrage and temperance on the part of constituency officials, just before the First World War started.

Horsley strongly supported the Liberals' welfare state initiative, the National Insurance Act of 1911, despite strong opposition from most of his medical colleagues.

First World War service and death

Grave of Victor Horsley at Amara War Cemetery.

In 1910, Horsley was commissioned as a captain in the Territorial Army, in the 3rd London General Hospital of the Royal Army Medical Corps. On the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered for active duty on the Western Front, where he was initially posted as surgeon at the British hospital at Wimereux, France. In May 1915, he was posted as a colonel and Director of Surgery of the British Army Medical Service in Egypt, based at the 21st General Hospital in Alexandria, in support of the Dardanelles Campaign. In the following year, he volunteered for field surgery duty in Mesopotamia, where he died unexpectedly in Amarah, Iraq, on 16 July 1916, of heatstroke and severe hyperpyrexia, at only 59 years of age.

Further reading

• Tan, Tze-Ching; Black, Peter McL. (March 2002). "Sir Victor Horsley (1857–1916): pioneer of neurological surgery". Neurosurgery. 50 (3): 607–611. doi:10.1097/00006123-200203000-00032. ISSN 0148-396X. PMID 11841730.
• Hanigan, William C. (1994). "Obstinate valour: the military service and death of Sir Victor Horsley". British Journal of Neurosurgery. 8 (3): 279–288. doi:10.3109/02688699409029615. ISSN 0268-8697. PMID 7946016.
• "Sir Victor Horsley (1857–1916)". 3 January 2010. Archived from the original on 10 June 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2010.
• Lyons, John Benignus (October 1967). "Sir Victor Horsley". Medical History. 11 (4): 361–373. doi:10.1017/s0025727300012503. ISSN 0025-7273. PMC 1033746. PMID 4863669.
• "Horsley Papers". AIM25. 1790–1965. Archived from the original on 21 June 2008. Retrieved 28 July 2010.

External links

• Horsley Papers at University College London