GULL, SIR WILLIAM WITHEY

This article appears in Volume V12, Page 714 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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GULL, SIR WILLIAM WITHEY , 1st Bart. (1816-1890), English physician, was the youngest son of John

Gull

, a barge-owner and wharfinger of

Thorpe

-le-Soken, Essex, and was born on the 31st of December 1816 at Colchester. He began life as a schoolmaster, but in 1837 Benjamin Harrison, the treasurer of Guy's

Hospital

, who had noticed his ability, brought him up to London from the school at Lewes where he was usher, and gave him employment at the

hospital

, where he also gained permission to attend the lectures. In 1843 he was made a lecturer in the medical school of the hospital, in 1851 he was chosen an assistant physician, and in 1856 he became full physician. In 1847 he was elected Fullerian professor of physiology in the Royal Institution, retaining the post for the usual three years, and in 1848 he delivered the Gulstonian Lectures at the College of Physicians, where he filled every office of honour but that of president. He died in London on the 29th of January 1890 after a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of paralytic strokes, the first of which had occurred nearly three years previously. He was created a baronet in 1872, in recognition of the skill and care he had shown in attending the prince of Wales during his attack of typhoid in 1871. Sir William

Gull

's fame rested mainly on his success as a clinical practitioner; as he said himself, he was " a clinical physician or nothing." This success must be largely ascribed to his remarkable powers of observation, and to the

great

GREAT

opportunities he enjoyed for gaining experience of disease. He was sometimes accused of being a disbeliever in drugs. That was not the case, for he prescribed drugs like other physicians when he considered them likely to be beneficial. He felt, however, that their administration was only a part of the physician's duties, and his mental honesty and outspokenness prevented him from deluding either himself or his patients with unwarranted notions of what they can do. But though he regarded medicine as primarily an art for the relief of physical suffering, he was far from disregarding the scientific side of his
' The word " gulf," a portion of the sea partially enclosed by the coast-line, and usually taken as referring to a

tract

TRACT (from Lat. tractare, to treat of a matter, through Provencal tractat and Ital. trattato)

of water larger than a bay and smaller than a sea, is derived through the Fr. golfe, from

Late

LATE

Gr. s6X 'os, class. Gr. Kogiros, bosom, hence bay, cf. Lat. sinus. I.n University slang, the term is used of the position of those who fail to obtain a place in the honours

list

LIST (O.E.
lisle
- LISLE, ALICE (c. 1614-1685)
, a Teutonic word, cf. Dut. lust, Ger. Leiste, adapted in Ital. lista and Fr.
lisle
- LISLE, ALICE (c. 1614-1685)
)
LIST, FRIEDRICH (1789-1846)

at a public examination, but are allowed a "pass."profession, and he made some real contributions to medical science. His papers were printed chiefly in Guy's Hospital Reports and in the proceedings of learned societies: among the subjects he wrote about were cholera, rheumatic fever,

taenia

TAENIA (Gr. Tatyla, ribbon, fillet)

, paraplegia, and abscess of the brain, while he distinguished for the first time (1873) the disease now known as myxoedema, describing it as a " cretinoid state in adults."

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