author
Sir Humphry Davy Rolleston
1862–1944
A leading English physician of the late Victorian and early twentieth-century world, he combined a long clinical career with a gift for medical history and public service. He is especially remembered for his work at St George’s Hospital and for writing clearly about medicine’s past and present.
1 Audiobook
Some Medical Aspects of Old Age Being the Linacre lecture, 1922, St. John's college, Cambridge
by Sir Humphry Davy Rolleston
About the author
Born in 1862, he came from a notably scholarly family: his father, George Rolleston, was a respected Oxford physiologist, and his mother’s family was connected to the scientist Sir Humphry Davy, from whom he took his name. He was educated at Marlborough College and St John’s College, Cambridge, then trained in medicine at St George’s Hospital, where he built the career that made him one of Britain’s best-known physicians.
Over the years he served in a remarkable number of medical institutions and public roles, gaining a reputation not only as a clinician but also as a learned writer and organizer. He wrote on subjects ranging from medical history to biography and clinical medicine, and he was honored with a baronetcy as well as major national distinctions.
Rolleston died in 1944. For listeners interested in the history of medicine, he stands out as the kind of physician-author who could move easily between bedside practice, scholarship, and public life.