Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Milroy, Gavin
MILROY, GAVIN (1805–1886), medical writer and founder of the ‘Milroy lectureship’ at the Royal College of Physicians, was born in Edinburgh, where his father was in business, in 1805. He received his general education at the high school, and conducted his professional studies at the university. He became M.R.C.S. Edin. in June 1824, and M.D. Edin. in July 1828. He was one of the founders and active members of the Hunterian Society of Edinburgh, but soon settled as a general practitioner in London. He made a voyage as medical officer in the government packet service to the West Indies and the Mediterranean, and thenceforth chiefly devoted himself to writing for medical papers. From 1844 he was co-editor of Johnson's ‘Medico-Chirurgical Review’ till it was amalgamated with Forbes's ‘British and Foreign Medical Review’ in 1847. In October 1846 (iv. 285) he wrote in it an elaborate review on a French report on ‘Plague and Quarantine,’ by Dr. Prus (2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1846), and published an abridged translation, with preface and notes, as ‘Quarantine and the Plague,’ 8vo, London, 1846. He recommended the mitigation or total abolition of quarantine, and at the same time the dependence on sanitary measures alone for preservation from foreign pestilences. He at once became an authority on all questions of epidemiology, and was employed in several government commissions of inspection and inquiry. In 1849-50 he was a superintendent medical inspector of the general board of health; in 1852 he was sent by the colonial office to Jamaica ‘to inspect and report on the sanitary condition of that island,’ and gave the results in an official report. During the Crimean war in 1855-6 he was a member of the sanitary commission sent out to the army in the east; and when the commission was recalled at the end of the war, Milroy joined Dr. John Sutherland [q. v.] in drawing up the report of its transactions. In 1858 he was honorary secretary of the committee appointed by the Social Science Association to inquire into the practice and results of quarantine, and the results of the inquiries were printed in three parliamentary papers. Milroy belonged to the Medical and Chirurgical Society, and took a very active part in the establishment and management of the Epidemiological Society. He was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians on 22 Dec. 1847, and was elected a fellow in 1853. In 1862 he was a member of a committee appointed by the college at the request of the colonial office for the purpose of collecting information on the subject of leprosy. The report was printed in 1867, and in the appendix (p. 230) are some brief and sensible ‘Notes respecting the Leprosy of Scripture’ by Milroy. He never received from government any permanent medical appointment, but a civil list pension of 100l. a year was granted him. In later life he lived at Richmond in Surrey, where he died 11 Jan. 1886, at the age of eighty-one. He was buried in Kensal Green cemetery. He survived his wife (Miss Sophia Chapman) about three years, and had no children. He was a modest, unassuming man, of sound judgment, and considerable intellectual powers. He was brought up as a member of the Scottish kirk, but in later years attended the services of the Anglican church. He left a legacy of 2,000l. to the London College of Physicians for the endowment of a lectureship on ‘state medicine and public health, and subjects connected therewith,’ with a memorandum of ‘suggestions,’ dated 14 Feb. 1879. At the present time (1893) the lectures are four in number, and the lecturer's honorarium is sixty-six guineas.
Milroy also wrote some articles on ‘Sydenham’ in the ‘Lancet,’ 1846-7; the article on ‘Plague’ in Reynolds's ‘System of Medicine,’ vol. i., and many other anonymous articles in the medical journals.
[Lancet, 27 Feb. 1886; Brit. Med. Journ. same date; family information; personal knowledge.]