William Morrant Baker (1839-1896)

Abstract

MR. WILLIAM MORRANT BAKER, a prominent London surgeon of the pre-aseptic era, was born on October 20, 1839, at Andover, where he was educated at the Grammar School. He received his medical training first by serving as an apprentice to a local surgeon and later entered as a student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He obtained the qualification of M.R.C.S. in 1864, and became F.R.C.S. in 1867. Between the years 1862 and 1892 he obtained a number of appointments at his hospital, including those of demonstrator of anatomy, lecturer in physiology, surgeon to the skin department, casualty surgeon, assistant surgeon and full surgeon. He was also surgeon to the Evelina Hospital for Children, examiner for the Royal College of Surgeons and of the Universities of London and Durham, and associate editor of Kirke's “Handbook of Physiology”. He retired from the staff of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1892. Under the term of “Baker's cysts” his name is attached to hernial protrusions of the synovial membrane of a joint through an aperture in its fibrous capsule. He also invented a flexible tube of red rubber for tracheotomy which is named after him.