Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2008

THOMAS CLIFFORD ALLBUTT (1836-1925) Diseases of the arteries, including angina pectoris. Macmillan 1915 Vol. I: xiii, 534 pp.; Vol. II: vi, 559 pp. 21.8 cm.

Allbutt was born in Yorkshire at the vicarage of Dewsbury. Educated in the sciences at Cambridge, he received his medical degree from the medical school of St. George's Hospital in London. In 1861 Allbutt was elected physician to the Leeds House of Recovery, one of the earliest hospitals in England to specialize in the treatment of fevers. He was appointed physician to the Leeds Infirmary in 1864 and moved to London in 1889 to accept a Commissionership in Lunancy. In 1892 Allbutt was appointed Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge. Allbutt developed the short-stemmed clinical thermometer in 1866, was the first to describe locomotor ataxia in 1869, made important original observations on the use of the ophthalmoscope, on syphilitic disease of the cerebral arteries, and the effects of exercise on the heart. He wrote on many other clinical subjects and was also a noted scholar of medical history. Allbutt received many honors and titles for his accomplishments and was knighted in 1907. In 1893, Allbutt began work on his noteworthy multi-volume System of medicine which was published between 1896 and 1899. The present work was published when he was eighty years of age and is considered to be his most important treatise. The work includes the substance of the Lane Lectures on the cardiovascular system delivered at San Francisco in 1898, his research and conclusions on arteriosclerosis, essential hypertension, angina pectoris, and arterial blood pressure.

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 2894; Osler 1786