OBITUARY, Linally Decided to Enter the Medical Profession
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;r:NE: I, OBIMUARY. JUNE OBIIYUARY. 19"J71 I-igo-.1-MIDICALTNDIC L JOarUNAXI 1337 house in London. He then for some time studied law, but OBITUARY, linally decided to enter the medical profession. Even during his brief commercial life, however, he read steadily and took J03EPH GROVES, B.A., M.B.LOND., M.R.C.S., the B.A. degree of London at the age of 19. After taking LR.C.P.LoND., M.D.BOLOGNA, F.G.S., F.8.S., F.MET.S., his arts degree he entered King's College as a medical ,JUSTICE OF THE PEACE; MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH, ISLE OF student, we believe in 1861. Whilst only a second-year WIGHT RURAL DISTRICT COUNCIL, ETC. student the pecuniary advisability of his taking a quali- ON May 21st Dr. Joseph Groves died at his residence at fication to practise was urged upon him by some of his Carisbrooke in the Isle of Wight. For the three weeks college friendE, and after considerab1e difficulty he was preceding his death his friends and the inhabitants of the allowed to enter for the Licence of the Society of Isle of Wight had been aware that he lay very seriously Apothecaries, being granted this in 1863. Taking the ill, but to many of his very numerous and widely-scattered M.R.C.S.Eng. in 1864, he was appointed Medical Registrar tpersonal friends, and to those also who have known him at King's College Hnspital, having previously held tem- in the Council and Committee meetings of the various porarily one or two dispensary appointments. About 1866 -associations and societies with which he has been so long he settled in practice in Highbury, still keeping in touch and so honourably cDnnected, the intimation of the end of with his hospital, acting as anaesthetist to Fergusson and his manifold activities and untiring efforts in the cause of Priestley, with both of whom he was on terms of great ,suffering humanity must come with a sudden sense of friendliness. It was in the year 1866 that an apparently irreparable loss. With accidental occurrence his death there passes _ - 0 the outbreak of from the Isle of Wight l. l CCl_loAsiatic cholera- de- ,one of its most pro- cied very largely the minent, useful, and future trend of his life- universally respected ~~ 4k ~work. As a result of itizens,cand the British a hastily - summoned Medical Aslociation Privy Council meeting, bas to mourn a loss r 1-11 Ivarious medical men, which will be felt for > . |IIselected by medical many years to come. * bodies, were put in A distinguished phy- cha'rge of preventive sician, a sanitary re- measures in thesieveral former of the first rank, districts. Dr. Groves, -an antiquarian, and a acting in co-operation geologist, his interests lll_HwithDr. Evans, the und sympathies were I _ l * 11 _ poMedical Officer of so many sided that Health, was put in they defy brief descnip- charge of the Charing tioni, and we can only Cross district until the here mention the most epidemic was stamped salient features and J out. His fearless dis- ,events of a life spent charge of duty and in well-doing. lofty disdain of per- He was born in the sonal attack were well -year 1839, being the illustrated at that time eldest son of Mr.Joseph by his closing of the Gtroves of Newport, and old Holy Well from was descended by the which Holywell Street snaternal line from one was named, in the face of the oldest island of considerable popu- families. His mother lar Indignation. On belonged to the Roach the day following thbi family, who for several Dr.Grove3, though himself in act he was mobbed and hundreds of years have stoned, and had to take larmed the lands of refuge in Charing Cross Arreton and Great and Hospital. This tem- Little Standen, and porary appointment doubtless it was his marks, we believe, the close connexion with beginning of his life- long labours in the many families; of his- public service, labours which have resulted torei importancewhich wasin theat isilandthe root at once of his Iin incalcuilable bene- great love for the beau- bOSePH GROVES, B.A., b M.B.LOND.,II.B.LOND.Xarx.s:M.D.C.S.fits to the people of Stiful homes of his fore- the Isle of Wight, often fathers and of the antiquarian zeal which never dese'rted wrung with unusual courage and tenacity of purposve him, making him at the time of his death one of the from the most istrenuous local opposition. Not long after most reliable and well-informed authorities on isiland this time and to the great concern of his friends, signs of antiquities. pulmonary consumption appeared and in 1868 his chief, His parentsj belonged to the Methodisit (Jonnexion, and Sir William Fergusson, secured for him a transatlantic he was sent at the age of 12 to Taunton College, a well- travelling appointment. Unf'ortunately on his second known school for the Eons of Methodists. Even in his voyage to New York a seve're haemorrhage occurred and -school days he must have been recognized as the possessor we may incidentally mention it as most characteristic of of those sterling qualities which afterwards won for him the man that a fellow-traveller incurring a fracture of the the respect of all who knewI him, for it is related th'at thigh and no medical man being, available at the time, whilst' still a lower-f-orm boy the Head-Mr. Thomas Dr. Groves, though himself in a mosit precarious condi- Sibley-having to repress a certain amount of illicit cor- tion, caused himself to be carried to the side of the patient Tespondence carried on by the boys, and being unwilling and directed the setting of the limb. Returning to Cansg- to intervene personally, requested the boys to elect for brooke, as his friends thoughit to die, he treated himself themselves a " postman," through whose hands all letters on w'hatt Aare now everyw1here recognized as t.he mostf had to pass. Young Groves, much to his surprise, was approved methods of treatment of pulmonary consumption elected to this post of trust. Leaving school in 1856, at -abundant food and perpetual open air-and made a the age of 17, and having passed the London Matricula- most satisfactory recovery. In this relation we may say tion, his future career appeara for a time to have been un- that we have before us as we write the original manu- decided, and for about a year he was employed at a business script of an article entitled "The Health of Rome," by I 2%2 Ift I 33.8 KMQ" jrg.ii.x-"I OBITUJARY. [JU NE I , 90. Dr Groves, penned nearly forty years ago, in which are pelled him to take to his bed, he has discharged his indicated those principles afterwards put into practice numerous duties-for the past year witlh increasing diffi- in his treatment of consumption and insanity and which culty, but with indomitable oDurage and never a thought are;to-day universally relognized. "In no respects per- for himself-as Medical Officer of Health and as a highly- haps," he said, " is the advance in medical knowledge and esteemed medical practitioner, winning the confidence treatment more marked than in the confidence with which and admiration of all. As a physician his practice has the modern physician regards many cases of phthisis been entirely confined to medicine,.and for many years he and of mental derangement which come before him. He has been largely called in consultation by his knows that if, instead of farther impairing the digestive in the island and the adjacent mainland.cnfufrereAs functions of a consumptive with sedatives and other a Medical Officer of Health he was lknown and drugs, he judiciously administers cod-liver oil, iron, and respected all over Great and Greater Britain. other foods; that, if instead of depriving him of all In the words of an Isle of Wight newspaper, occupation, he encouragos him to follow pursuits which he fought battalions almost singlehanded and carried do not hurry the circulation, and which can be carried on reform after reform at the' bayonet point. His annual in a pure atmosphere; and that if, instead of shutting him reports were-models of what such reports should be, and up in a suite of rooms heated to one temperature, his in the closing words of his last report, one may dimly patient can reside in climates which admit of his living discern his dawning knowledge that he was hand- out-of-doors all the year 'round, life will be at least pro- ing in his last report, his final apologia pro vita- longed in most cases. sud, at once a farewell He knows that if, in- and his most fitting stead of confintng a epitaph: " As the person with mental person who knows, delusions in a mad- perhaps, your sanitary house and using such district and its require- disciplinary measures ments better than any as were formerly in other, I have, rightly vogue, he is bold or wrongly, en- enough to send him deavoured to do my travelling under sunny duty by speaking skies and with sur- plainly, but not, I roundings of the trust, discourteously. beautifal in nature and My only object has art, which will provide been the good of the forhimconstantchange people for whose wel- of scene and material fare I have striven for for change of thought, so many years." he will in many cases He joined the British more or less speedily Medical Association in restore him to his 1875.