1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marshall, John (surgeon)

MARSHALL, JOHN (1818–1891), British surgeon and physiologist, was born at Ely, on the 11th of September 1818, his father being a lawyer of that city. He entered University College, London, in 1838, and in 1847 he was appointed assistant-surgeon at the hospital, becoming in 1866 surgeon and professor of surgery. He was professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy from 1873 till his death. In 1883 he was president of the College of Surgeons, also Bradshaw lecturer (on “Nerve-stretching for the relief or cure of pain”), Hunterian orator in 1885, and Morton lecturer in 1889. In 1867 he published his well-known textbook The Outlines of Physiology in two volumes. He died on the 1st of January 1891. “Marshall’s fame,” wrote Sir W. MacCormac in his volume on the Centenary of the College of Surgeons (1900), “rests on the great ability with which he taught anatomy in relation to art, on the introduction into modern surgery of the galvano-cautery, and on the operation for the excision of varicose veins. He was one of the first to show that cholera might be spread by means of drinking water, and issued a report on the outbreak of cholera in Broad Street, St James’s, 1854. He also invented the system of circular wards for hospitals, and to him are largely owing the details of the modern medical student’s education.”