Alfred Willett (1837–1913)

Abstract

THIS eminent London surgeon was born on January 3, 1837, the second son of William Catt of Brighton, who afterwards took the name of Willett. His medical education was carried out at the Sussex County Hospital, where he was a pupil for three years, and at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. After qualifying in 1859 he held a number of junior appointments at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where he was successively elected assistant surgeon, surgeon in charge of the orthopaedic department, full surgeon and lecturer in surgery. In 1897 he delivered the Bradshaw Lecture on “The Correction of Certain Deformities by Operative Measures upon Bones” at the Royal College of Surgeons, where he served on the Council from 1887 until 1903 and as vice-president in 1894 and 1897, but declined nomination for the presidency. Among the other appointments of distinction which he held were those of president to the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society and of surgeon to Queen Charlotte's Lying-in Hospital and the Evelina Hospital for Children. Willett was an excellent example of the transitional period between the pre-Listerian era and that of antiseptic surgery. Undeterred by the unsympathetic attitude of his colleagues, he studied Lister's methods, and in the early eighties was the only surgeon in the hospital to perform systematic abdominal operations in conjunction with the celebrated gynaecologist, Dr. Matthews Duncan. The interest which he took in orthopaedic surgery was rewarded by his successful treatment of deformities. His death took place twelve years after his retirement from St. Bartholomew's Hospital, on June 20, 1913. A silver medal named after him is awarded annually to the winner of the highest marks in operative surgery at the Brackenbury Surgical Examination at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.