Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Simon, John
SIMON, Sir JOHN (1816–1904), sanitary reformer and pathologist, born in the City of London on 10 Oct. 1816, was sixth of the fourteen children of Louis Michael Simon (1782–1879), a member of the Stock Exchange, who served on the committee from 1837 till his retirement in 1868. His grandfathers were both Frenchmen, but having emigrated to England, each had there married an Englishwoman. Both his parents were very long lived, his father dying within three months of completing his ninety-eighth year, and his mother, Matilde Nonnet (1787–1882), within five days of completing her ninety-fifth year.
After three or four years at a preparatory school at Pentonville, John Simon spent seven and a half years at a private school at Greenwich kept by the Rev. Dr. Charles Parr Burney, son of Dr. Charles Burney [q. v.]. He then went to Rhenish Prussia to study with a German pfarrer for a year. The familiarity with the German language which he thus acquired was of great advantage to him later. He was intended for the medical profession, and on his return from Germany he was in the autumn of 1833 apprenticed for six years to Joseph Henry Green [q. v.], surgeon at St. Thomas's and professor of surgery at King's College, his father paying a fee of 500 guineas. In 1838 he became M.R.C.S. and in 1844 was made hon. F.R.C.S. in 1840, when King's College developed a hospital of its own, he was appointed its senior assistant surgeon. He held this post till 1847, when he was made lecturer on pathology at 200l. a year. He eventually became surgeon at St. Thomas's Hospital, his 'old and more familiar home,' where with progressive changes of title he remained officer for life (cf. Personal Recollecions, privately printed, 1903). He became a great leader and teacher in pathology. In 1862–3 Simon was one of those who successfully urged the removal of the hospital from the Borough to the Albert Embankment. In 1876 he retired from the post of surgeon and was made consulting surgeon and governor of the hospital.
Ambitious of eventually becoming a consulting surgeon, Simon did not at first devote himself to his professional work with undue rigour. He spent his spare time on non-professional pursuits — on metaphysical reading, on Oriental languages, on study in the print-room of the British Museum. Such distribution of interest left the impress of literary ability and culture on his future writings and tastes (Dr. J. F. Payne in Lancet, ii. 1904). As early as 1842 he had written a pamphlet on medical education, and contributed the article 'Neck' to the 'Cyclopaedia of Anatomy.' In 1844 he gained the first Astley-Cooper prize by an essay on the thymus gland (published with additions in the following year), and wrote for the Royal Society a paper on the thyroid gland (Phil. Trans, vol. 134), the value of which that society promptly recognised by electing him a fellow in January 1845, at the early age of twenty-nine. (As to the importance of these two researches in comparative anatomy, see Sir John Burdon Sanderson's Memoir in Proc. Roy. Soc. 1905, lxxv. 341.)
The current of Simon's thoughts and activities was wholly changed by his appointment in October 1848 as first medical officer of health for the City of London at a salary of 500l. a year (eventually 800l.). Liverpool was the first town in England to appoint a medical officer of health; London was the second. Simon, whose continued study of pathology at St. Thomas's Hospital gave him great advantage as a health officer, set to work at once with characteristic thoroughness, and presented a series of annual and other reports to the City commissioners of sewers which attracted great attention at the time, and may still be read with profit. They were unofficially reprinted in 1854, with a preface in which Simon spoke strongly of 'the national prevalence of sanitary neglect,' and demonstrated the urgent need of control of the public health by a responsible minister of state. These views Simon kept steadily before him throughout his official career. The general board of health had been created by government in 1848. It was reconstituted in 1854, and by a further act of 1855 the board was empowered to appoint a medical officer. Simon accepted the post in October 1855. The board was subject to successive annual renewals of its powers, and the new office was one of undefined purpose and doubtful stability (see a consolatory letter from Ruskin to Simon dated Turin, 20 July 1858, in vol. xxxvi. of Ruskin's Complete Works, p. 286). In 1858 the board was abolished, its duties being taken over by the lords of the council under the Public Health Act (1858), which to disarm opponents was framed to last for a single year. Simon thus became medical officer of the privy council. The act of 1858 was only made permanent in 1859 in face of strong opposition. Simon always held in grateful remembrance Robert Lowe [q.v.], then vice-president of the council for education, whose promptitude and vigour saved the bill (see his English Sanitary Institutions, chap. xii. p. 277 seq. ; and for his appreciations of Lowe, Patchett Martin's Life, ii. 185-98, 501-14).
Simon made to the general board of health several valuable and comprehensive reports : on the relation of cholera to London water supply (1856), on vaccination (1857), on the sanitary state of the people of England (1858), and on the constitution of the medical profession (1858). These are reprinted in full in his 'Public Health Reports' (vol. i. 1887). As medical officer of the privy coimcil he instituted in 1858 annual reports on the working of his department, treating each year special subjects with broad outlook and in terse and graphic phrase. The most important parts were reprinted in 'Public Health Reports' (vol. ii. 1887). During this period (1858-71) Simon was implicitly trusted by his official superiors, was allowed a free hand, and rallied to his assistance a band of devoted fellow-workers, who helped to make the medical department a real power for good.
In August 1871, in accordance with the report of the royal sanitary commission which was appointed in April 1869 to consider means of co-ordinating the various public health authorities, the old poor law board, the local government act office (of the home office), and the medical department of the privy council were amalgamated to form one new department, the local government board. Simon became chief medical officer of the new board in the belief that his independent powers would be extended rather than diminished. But neither (Sir) James Stansfeld [q. v. Suppl. I], president of the board, nor (Sir) John Lambert [q.v.], organising secretary, took his view of his right of initiative and administrative independence. Simon protested in vigorous minutes and appeals, which were renewed when George Sclater-Booth [q.v.] became president in 1874. In the result, after a fierce battle with the treasury, his office was 'abolished,' and Simon retired in May 1876 on a special annual allowance of 1333l. 6s. 9d. He was less than sixty years old, and his energies were undecayed, so that the cause of sanitary progress was prejudiced by his retirement.
Simon received the inadequate reward of C.B., and was also made a crown member of the medical council, on which he did much good work until his resignation in 1895. In 1881 he was president of the state medicine section of the International Medical Congress held in London. With his friend, J. A. Kingdon, F.R.C.S., he was mainly responsible for the establishment by the Grocers' Company of scholarships for the promotion of sanitary science. Simon took an active part in the affairs of the Royal College of Surgeons ; from 1868 to 1880 he was one of the college council, from 1876 to 1878 was vice-president, and during 1878-9 acted as president. He filled also various honorary offices in professional societies. In 1887, on the occasion of Queen Victoria's first jubilee, he was promoted K.C.B. At the end of his career he received the first award of two medals which had been founded for the purpose of recognising eminence in sanitary science — the Harben medal of the Royal Institute of Public Health (1896) and the Buchanan medal of the Royal Society (November 1897). He was made hon. D.C.L. Oxford (1868), Med. Chir. Doctor Munich (1872), LL.D. Cambridge (1880), LL.D. Edinburgh (1882), and M.D. Dublin (1887).
In addition to professional and official acquaintances, Simon had many literary and artistic friends, including Alfred Elmore, R.A., Sir George Bowyer, George Henry Lewes, Mowbray Morris, (Sir) Edwin Chadwick, Thomas Woolner, R.A., Tom Taylor, Arthur Helps, and in particular John Ruskin [q. v. Suppl. I]. Simon first became acquainted with Ruskin and his parents through a chance meeting in Savoy in 1856, and the acquaintance ripened into a very warm friendship. Simon became in Ruskin's vocabulary, from the identity of Christian name, Ruskin's 'dear brother John' (Works of Ruskin, xxxv. 433; see especially Sesame and Lilies, xviii. 105, and Time and Tide, § 162, xvii. 450). Simon gave Ruskin sound advice as to his health, which Ruskin did not always adopt (see Sir E. T. Cook's Life of Ruskin, 1911, i. 392, and Ruskin's correspondence with Simon and his wife in Buskin's Works, ed. Cook and Wedderburn, xxxvi.-vii. passim). To Ruskin the Simons owed their friendship with Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Lady Burne-Jones.
In March 1898, being then in failing health, Simon prepared for private circulation some 'Personal Recollections,' which were revised on 2 Dec. 1903, 'in blindness and infirmity.' He died at his house. 40 Kensington Square (where he had lived since 1867), on 23 July 1904, and was buried at Lewisham cemetery, Ladywell. By his will the ultimate residue of his estate was bequeathed to St. Thomas's Hospital. A bust by Thomas Woolner, R.A., executed in 1876, is at the Royal College of Surgeons.
On 22 July 1848 he married Jane (1816-1901) daughter of Matthew Delaval O'Meara, deputy commissary-general in the Peninsular war. He had no issue. Lady Simon was as close a friend of Ruskin as was her husband, and Ruskin famiharly named her his 'dear P.R.S.' (Pre-Raphaelite sister and Sibyl), or more shortly 'S.' (cf. Lady Burne-Jones, Memorials of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, i. 257).
Sir Richard Douglas Powell, in his presidential address to the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1905 (vol. lxxxviii. p. cxv), said of Simon that he ' was a man gifted with true genius, and inspired with the love of his kind. He will ever remain a noble figure in the medicine of the nineteenth century, and will live in history as the apostle of sanitation.' The most important feature of Simon's work was his insistence that practice should be based on scientific knowledge, and his recognition of the large field for investigation without reference to immediate practical results. He was confident that such research (to use his own words) 'would lead to more precise and intimate knowledge of the causes and processes of important diseases, and thus augment, more and more, the vital resources of preventive medicine.'
Simon's chief reports and writings on sanitary subjects were) issued collectively by subscription by the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain (2 vols. 1887). In 1890 he brought out 'English Sanitary Institutions, reviewed in their Course of Development, and in some of their Political and Social Relations' (2nd edit. 1897), a masterly survey which contains an elaborate vindication of his official career. Besides addresses to medical bodies, Simon wrote in 1878 a comprehensive article on Contagion for the 'Dictionary of Medicine' edited by Sir Richard Quain [q. v. Suppl. I].
[Personal Recollections of Sir John Simon, K.C.B. (privately printed in 1898, and revised in 1903); Public Health Reports (ed. Dr. E. Seaton), 2 vols. 1887 (with two portraits from photographs in 1848 and in 1876); English Sanitary Institutions, 1890; The Times, 25 July 1904; Lancet, vol. ii. 1904 (by Dr. J. F. Payne), pp. 308 et seq.; Brit. Med. Journal, vol. ii. 1904, pp. 265-356; Journal of Hygiene, vol. v. 1905, pp. 1-6; Proc. Roy. Soc, vol. lxxv. 1905 (by Sir John Burdon Sanderson); personal knowledge; private information.]