Thomas Barlow, 1845 - 1945

Abstract

No centenarians are recorded among the ordinary Fellows of the Royal Society. Sir Thomas Barlow fell short by eight months of completing his hundredth year. Physical strength and vigour of mind stayed with him almost to the end. As President of the Royal College of Physicians, and physician to Queen Victoria and the next two sovereigns in succession, he had attained the highest place among consultants in medicine. Even on retirement from these posts he continued for the next quarter of a century to live in the minds of medical men, young as well as old, for throughout this time he was head of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund and through his personal activity for the welfare of that charity made his name happily familiar to both those who gave and those who received. He was justly and proudly spoken of as the Nestor of British medicine; and he loved his profession. Barlow was elected to the Fellowship of the Society in 1909, when sixty-four years old. It is of interest to note the names of the Fellows in the group of active clinical medicine who signed his certificate at that time: Lord Lister, Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, Sir David Ferrier, P. H. Pye-Smith, Sir Victor Horsley, Sidney Martin, Sir Frederick Mott, H. C. Bastian, Sir Lauder Brunton, Sir William Gowers, F. W. Pavy, Sir John Rose Bradford, and Sir Patrick Manson. All these men had passed away before Barlow himself died, and the clinicians who have succeeded to them in the Society are now in smaller number.