OBITUARY Brmish 683 MEDICAL Journal Advisory Committee Concerned with the Administration of the Cruelty to Animals Act
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SEPT. 16, 1950 OBITUARY BRMiSH 683 MEDICAL JOURNaL Advisory Committee concerned with the administration of the Cruelty to Animals Act. Obituary He was a prominent figure in the Royal College of Physicians of London, becoming eventually Senior Censor. He took the Membership of the College in 1891 and was elected a Fellow in 1900. At one time he was president HERBERT MORLEY FLETCHER, M.D., F.R.C.P. of the Section of Medicine of the Royal Society of Medi- Dr. Morley Fletcher, consulting physician to St. Bar- cine and at another president of the Section of Diseases of tholomew's Hospital, died at his Sussex home on Children. He had also been president of the British Paedi- September 9, in his eighty-sixth year. Although he had atric Association and honorary secretary of the Association lived for years in retirement in the Sussex village of of Physicians. The Royal Australasian College of Sur- Petworth, Dr. Morley Fletcher will be remembered not geons made him an Honorary Fellow, and in 1937 Queen's only by a host of his Harley Street neighbours and others University, Belfast, conferred on him the honorary degree but by a large number of of LL.D. The Marquess of Londonderry, Chancellor of young and middle-aged mem- the University, in bestowing the degree, described him as bers of the medical profes- having one of the most acutely critical minds in medicine. sion who worked under him " His detection of error is exercised not only on scientific as clinical clerks and house- hypotheses but also on conjectures contained in the type physicians or met him in the of monographs whose utility is most doubted by their examination-room. He was authors." This ceremony took place during the British examiner in medicine for Medical Association meeting at Belfast, where Dr. Morley Cambridge, Durham, Man- Fletcher was president of the Section of Diseases of chester, Sheffield, and Glas- Children. In 1894 he published a translation of C. van Kl gow Universities, Queen's Kahlden's Method of Pathological Histology. He con- University, Belfast, and the tributed the article on biliary cirrhosis in Allbutt and National University of Ire- Rolleston's System of Medicine and on diseases of the land, also for the Conjoint peritoneum, liver, and pancreas in Garrod, Batten, and Board and the Society of Thursfield's Diseases of Children. He was a frequent con- Apothecaries, so that a large tributor to the Practitioner, and his writings were authori- proportion of entrants into medicine must have been tative and widely quoted. examined by him. He had the gift of rapidly assess- He was twice married: first to Ethel Frances, who died ing the quality of an individual and measuring his in 1918, daughter of the late Joseph Crossley, of Halifax, attainments, and was never misled by pretentiousness or by, whom he had two sons and three daughters; one of superficial brilliance. his daughters of this marriage is the wife of Mr. H. U. Herbert Morley Fletcher was born in 1864 at Huyton, in Willink, K.C. His second marriage was to Mary Christina, Lancashire, the son of Alfred Evans Fletcher and Sarah, sister of Mr. H. U. Willink, by whom he had two daughter of Richard Morley, of Leeds. His younger daughters. brother was Sir Walter Morley Fletcher, the first secre- A former house-physician writes: "'Morley," as we tary to the Medical Research Council, who died in 1933. always called him, gave one the impression of being a-bit Herbert was sent to Mill Hill School, and then to Trinity aloof. But to become his house-physician was to become College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. in 1887. At his friend and colleague. It was only after one had left Cambridge, like his brother, he shone not only in natural Bart's that one realized how tolerant he had been to youth- science but also as an athlete. He was elected president ful arrogance. He treated his house-physicians as equals of the Cambridge University Athletic Club in 1888, and who were sharing with him the common task of looking to a good age he was adept in many kinds of outdoor after the sick. " It might be worth while trying such-and- sport. Few men have kept their youthful appearance and such a drug," was his method of instruction: you received carriage so long after middle life. He received his medical the instruction in the form of a consultation, and this was training at St. Bartholomew's, qualifying in 1890, and pro- enormously encouraging. ceeding M.D.Cantab. in 1893. He completed his studies at Morley Fletcher was a sound clinician of the older Freiburg and Vienna. school. He kept himself up to date with recent advances Morley Fletcher's reputation as a consultant in general in medicine without ever surrendering his judgment of a medicine, and especially in children's diseases, quickly case to the compilers of reports on special investigations. grew. In 1904 he was appointed to the staff of his old He was always courteous and urbane, and to be on hospital, St. Bartholomew's, of which in due time he "Morley's" firm as clerk and house-physician was a very became senior physician and on his retirement in 1929 happy experience. That very remarkable figure in charge consulting physician. He was also vice-president of the of his male ward, Sister Hope (Miss Powell), used to say: Medical College. Other hospitals with which he was asso- " One can get very cross with Dr. Fletcher, but as soon ciated were the East London Hospital for Children, Queen as he smiles you are disarmed at once." One amusing Charlotte's, the Alexandra Hospital for Diseases of the characteristic of him was that once he had made up his Hip, the Florence Nightingale Hospital, the Infants' Hos- mind that certain of your experiences had followed a certain pital, and the Bushey Heath, Hertford County, and Royal pattern it was difficult to convince him of error in one or Buckinghamshire Hospitals. He was also a member of the two particulars: he held fast to his own version. consulting staff of the Convalescent Home for Officers at About a year ago he said he thought he had shrunk a Osborne, Isle of Wight, honorary physician to the Metro- bit, but he still held his slim, trim figure as erect as ever. politan Convalescent Institution, and a member of the Morley Fletcher was a connoisseur in those things that Medical Consultative Board of the Navy. In the war of make for the fuller life. To all who knew him well he 1914-18 he served as major, R.A.M.C.(T.). In 1933 he was a lovable person, and they will hold his memory in was appointed by the Government a member of the great affection. 684 SEPT. 1950 OBITUARY BRITISH 16, MEDICAL JOURNAL Dr. ERNEST VILLIERS HUNTER, of the Church Missionary for his outstanding work in a field-dressing station. As a Society, Uganda, died suddenly on July 29 at Nairobi aged general practitioner he was much beloved by his patients and 73 years. As a young man he worked as a missionary in India, held in great esteem by his brother practitioners. He was on but after a time he decided to become a doctor, and he qualified the staff of Harrow Hospital for many years as a general practi- in Ceylon in 1903. After qualifying he held a number of tioner and gave much of his time to giving anaesthetics there. medical posts, being at one time in charge of a leper colony During the second world war he did E.M.S. work at the same in India. At the beginning of the first world war he joined hospital. He was a keen member of the B.M.A. from 1910, the R.A.M.C. and was posted to Gibraltar. On demobilization and chairman of the Harrow Division in 1926-7. In 1941 he he took up general practice in Worcestershire, but two years represented Harrow at the Annual Representative Meeting in later he responded to an appeal from the Church Missionary London. By his death the district of Harrow has lost one of Society for a doctor to work in Uganda. For some years he its most loyal and devoted general practitioners, for he was a worked at Ngora, where he founded and built the Freda Carr man who devoted his time and attention whole-heartedly to his Hospital. In 1939 he took charge of the Mengo Hospital. profession.-H. E. T. During the difficult war years his gifts of resource and practical common sense were of great service to Mengo. He did much Mr. EDWARD GILLESPIE, for many years a member of the to modernize and improve the hospital. On his retirement in surgical staff of the Prince of Wales General Hospital, Totten- 1942 his services to the Protectorate were marked by the award ham, died at Bishop's Stortford on August 22. He studied of the O.B.E. He continued to serve the Church Missionary medicine at Glasgow and graduated M.B., Ch.B. in 1900. After Society in an advisory capacity up to the time of his death. working as a house-surgeon at the Western Infirmary he left Dr. Hunter was a man who was valued and respected by a wide Glasgow and held a number of hospital posts while studying circle of friends of all races. As a doctor he showed great surgery. He was admitted F.R.C.S.(England) in 1907.