Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Thompson, Henry
THOMPSON, Sir HENRY, first baronet (1820–1904), surgeon, born at Framlingham, Suffolk, 6 Aug. 1820, was only son of Henry Thompson, a general dealer, by his wife Susannah, daughter of Samuel Medley [q. v.], the artist. Thompson was educated under Mr. Fison, a nonconformist minister at Wrentham. He early engaged in mercantile pursuits, as his parents, who were uncompromising baptists, disliked the idea of a profession. Coming to London, he was, however, apprenticed to George Bottomley, a medical practitioner at Croydon, in January 1844, and in October he entered University College, London, as a medical student. He obtained the gold medal in anatomy at the intermediate examination at the London University in 1849, and the gold medal for surgery at the final M.B. examination in 1851. From June 1850 he acted as house surgeon at University College Hospital to (Sir) John Erichsen [q. v. Suppl. I], who was newly appointed surgeon. Joseph Lister, afterwards Lord Lister, was one of his first dressers, and on his advice Lister went to Edinburgh to work under James Syme [q. v.]. In January 1851 Thompson entered into partnership at Croydon with Bottomley, his former master, but after a few months he returned to London, and took the house 35 Wimpole Street where he lived during the rest of his life.
At the Royal College of Surgeons of England Thompson was admitted a member in 1850 and a fellow in 1853. He gained the Jacksonian prize in 1852 for his dissertation 'On the Pathology and Treatment of Stricture of the Urethra,' and he had the unusual distinction of obtaining the prize a second time in 1860 with his essay 'On the Healthy and Morbid Conditions of the Prostate Gland.' In 1883 he was appointed Hunterian professor of surgery and pathology.
Thompson acted for a short time as surgeon to the St. Marylebone Infirmary, but in 1853 he was appointed assistant surgeon to University College Hospital, becoming full surgeon in 1863, professor of clinical surgery in 1866, consulting surgeon and emeritus professor of clinical surgery in 1874.
Thompson early showed his predilection for the surgery of the urinary organs, and in July 1858 he visited Paris to study the subject still further under Jean Civiale (1792-1867), who first removed a stone from the bladder by the operation of crushing. Beginning life as a pupil of Civiale, Thompson at first crushed stones in the bladder at repeated intervals, leaving it to nature to remove the fragments. When Henry Jacob Bigelow (1818-1890) recommended crushing at a single sitting and removal of the fragments by operative measures, Thompson improved the technique of the operation. Later, about 1886, when the discredited operation of supra-pubic cystotomy was revived, Thompson became its advocate.
Thompson's successful crushing operations at University College soon attracted attention, and in 1863 he operated at Brussels upon Leopold I, King of the Belgians, completing the work which had been begun by Civiale eighteen months previously. In July and December 1872 Thompson treated Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, at Camden Place, Chislehurst. He performed the operation of lithotrity under chloroform on 2 Jan. 1873, and again on 7 Jan. A third sitting was arranged for noon on 9 Jan., but the emperor died of sudden collapse an hour before.
Thompson's attainments and interests were exceptionally versatile. He not merely came to be facile princeps in his own branch of surgery ; his zeal for hygiene made him a pioneer of cremation ; he was at the same time an authority on diet, a devoted student of astronomy, an excellent artist, a collector of china, and a man of letters.
To the subject of cremation Thompson first drew attention in England by an article in the 'Contemporary Review' in 1874. Experiments had been recently made in Italy, but a cremation society, the first of its kind in Europe, was founded in London, chiefly by Thompson's energy, in 1874. From that time onwards he acted as the president, and did all in his power to promote the practice both in England and on the Continent. A crematorium was built at Woking in 1879. Its use was forbidden by the home secretary, and it was not employed until March 1885, after the government had brought a test case against a man who had cremated his child in Wales, and Sir James Stephen had decided that the practice was not illegal if effected without causing a nuisance. Thompson also took a leading part in 1902 in the formation of the company which erected the crematorium at Golder's Green, near London, and the rules laid down for the guidance of that company have proved a model for cremation societies throughout the world. The introduction of cremation drew Thompson's attention incidentally to the unsatisfactory nature of the law in regard to death certification. The Cremation Act of 1902 (2 Ed. VII. c. 8) was an attempt to remedy some of the evils to which Thompson directed attention.
Astronomy occupied much of Thompson's leisure. He long worked at an observatory of his own, which he erected at his country house at Molesey. But his chief services to the science were his gifts to Greenwich observatory of some magnificent instruments, including a fine photo-heliograph of 9-inch aperture, a 30-inch reflecting telescope, and a large photographic telescope of 26-inch aperture and 2½ feet focal length ; the last telescope, twice the size of any previously at Greenwich, was offered in March 1894, and being manufactured by Sir Howard' Grubb of Dublin, was erected in April 1897.
Thompson doubtless inherited artistic power from his maternal grandfather, Samuel Medley. His original talent was improved by study under Edward Elmore, R.A., and Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, R.A. Paintings by him were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1865, 1870, annually from 1872 to 1878, and again in 1881, 1883, and 1885. Two of these pictures were afterwards shown in the Paris salon, and to this exhibition he contributed a landscape in 1891. Thompson was also an eminent collector of china. He acquired many fine specimens of old white and blue Nankin. A catalogue illustrated by the owner and James McNeill Whistler [q. V. Suppl. II] was issued in 1878. The collection was sold at Christie's on 1 June 1880.
Besides numerous articles in magazines, Thompson wrote two novels under the name of 'Pen Oliver.' 'Charlie Kingston's Aunt,' pubUshed in 1885, presents the life of a medical student some fifty years before. 'All But : a Chronicle of Laxenford Life' (1886), is illustrated by twenty full-page drawings by the author, in one of which he portrayed himself as he was in 1885.
Cultured society had great attractions for Thompson. As a host he was famous for his 'octaves,' which were dinners of eight courses for eight people at eight o'clock. They were commenced in 1872, and the last, which was the 301st, was given shortly before his death. The company was always as carefully selected as the food, and for a quarter of a century the most famous persons in the worlds of art, letters, science, politics, diplomacy, and fashion met at his table in Wimpole Street. King George V, when Prince of Wales, attended Thompson's 300th 'octave.'
Thompson, who was knighted in 1867, was created a baronet on 20 Feb. 1899. He died at 35 Wimpole Street on 18 April 1904, and was cremated at Golder's Green. He married, on 16 Dec. 1861, Kate Fanny, daughter of George Loder of Bath. His wife, a well-known pianist, long suffered from paralysis, but survived her husband, dying on 30 Aug. 1904, leaving issue a son, Henry Francis Herbert, who became second baronet, and two daughters.
A three-quarter length portrait, painted by Sir J. E. Millais, R.A., in 1881, hangs in the National Gallery. There is also a bust by F. W. Pomeroy, A.R.A., at Golder's Green. A cartoon portrait by 'Ape' appeared in 'Vanity Fair' in 1874.
Thompson's chief works are: 1. 'The Pathology and Treatment of Stricture of the Urethra both in the Male and Female,' 1854; 4th edit., London and Philadelphia, 1885; translated into German, München, 1888. 2. 'The Enlarged Prostate, its Pathology and Treatment,' 1858; 6th edit. London and Philadelphia, 1886; translated into German, Erlangen, 1867. 3. 'Practical Lithotomy and Lithotrity,' 1863; 3rd edit. 1880; translated into German, Kassel und Berlin, 1882. 4. 'Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Urinary Organs,' 1868; 8th edit. 1888; also American editions; translated into French, 1874 and again in 1889; translated into German, Berlin, 1877. 5. 'The Preventive Treatment of Calculous Disease,' 1873; 3rd edit. 1888. 6. 'Cremation,' 1874; 4th edit. 1901. 7. 'Food and Feeding,' 1880; 12th edit, enlarged, 1910. 8. 'On Tumours of the Bladder,' 1884. 9. 'Lectures on some Important Points connected with the Surgery of the Urinary Organs,' 1884. 10. 'Diet in Relation to Age and Activity,' 1886, 12mo; 4th edit. 1903; revised edit. 1910. 11. 'On the Suprapubic Operation of opening the Bladder for the Stone and for Tumours,' 1886. 12. 'Modern Cremation, its History and Practice,' 1889; 4th edit. 1901.
Thompson was also part author of the article on cremation in the 11th edition of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica.' 'Traité pratique des maladies des voies urinaires,' a collected edition of Thompson's surgical works, was published at Paris in 1880.
[Lancet, 1904, i. 1167 (with portrait); Brit. Med. Journal, 1904, i, 1191 (with portrait); private information.]