Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Bainbridge, Francis Arthur
BAINBRIDGE, FRANCIS ARTHUR (1874-1921), physiologist, was born 29 July 1874 at Stockton-on-Tees, the elder son of Robert Robinson Bainbridge, chemist, of that town, by his wife, Mary Sanderson. Educated at the Leys School, College, Cambridge, where he studied physiology and took a first class in both parts of the natural science tripos; (1895-1897). He then entered St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, obtaining his M.B. degree at Cambridge in 1901 and the M.D. in 1904.
Bainbridge’s work at this period, excellent though it was, gave no suggestion of the abilities which he was later to display. Medicine did not appeal to him, and for a time, seeing no opening in pure physiology, he devoted himself to pathology and bacteriology. In 1905 he became Gordon lecturer on pathology at Guy’s Hospital, and in 1907 he went as assistant bacteriologist to the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, where his work on food-poisoning bacilli gained wide recognition, and was later embodied in his Milroy lectures at the Royal College of Physicians (1912). In 1911 he became professor of physiology at Durham University and was now able to give undivided attention to the subject which he loved best. His success here was immediate, and when, in 1915, a chair of physiology was instituted at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, he was recalled to fill the post, which he occupied till his premature death, which took place in London on 21 October 1921. He was elected F.R.S. in 1919. He married in 1905 Hilda Winifred, daughter of the Rev. Edward Thornton Smith, of Bickley, Kent, by whom he had one daughter. Bainbridge was of slight physique and had indifferent health. He was not an impressive teacher, though his lucidity of mind rendered him a very successful one. But he was a brilliant experimenter, bestowing careful thought beforehand on a proposed research, and possessing both ingenuity in devising experiments and high technical skill in carrying them out. Thus his contributions to physiological science were of lasting value. Chief among them were his early work on the mechanism of lymph formation, that on urinary secretion and on the effect on the body of partial removal of the kidneys, and, above all, his later studies on the circulation, in which he established the law that increase of pressure on the venous side of the heart accelerated the rate of the beat. Apart from numerous scientific papers, his most important publication was a monograph on The Physiology of Muscular Exercise, a masterly review of the subject (1919).
[The Times, 29 October 1921; Proceeding of Royal Society, vol. xciii, B, 1922; private information; personal knowledge.]