- John Scott Burdon-Sanderson
Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson (
21 December 1828 -23 November 1905 ) was an English physiologist born nearNewcastle upon Tyne . A member of a well known Northumbrian family, he received his medical education at theUniversity of Edinburgh and at Paris. Settling inLondon , he becameMedical Officer of Health forPaddington in 1856 and four years laterphysician to theMiddlesex and the Brompton Consumption hospitals.When
diphtheria appeared in England in 1858 he was sent to investigate the disease at the different points of outbreak, and in subsequent years he carried out a number of similar inquiries, e.g. into the cattle plague and intocholera in 1866. He became first principal of theBrown Institution atLambeth in 1871, and in 1874 was appointedJodrell Professor of Physiology atUniversity College London , retaining that post until 1882. When the Waynflete Chair of Physiology was established at Oxford in 1882, he was chosen to be its first occupant, and immediately found himself the object of a furious anti-vivisection ist agitation. The proposal that the university should spend a large amount of money providing him with a suitable laboratory, lecture rooms, in which to carry on his work, was strongly opposed, by some on grounds of economy, but largely because he was an upholder of the usefulness and necessity of experiments upon animals. It was, however, eventually carried by a small majority (88 to 85), and in the same year theRoyal Society awarded him aRoyal Medal in recognition of his researches into the electrical phenomena exhibited by plants and the relations of minute organisms to disease, and of the services he had rendered to physiology andpathology . In 1885 theUniversity of Oxford was asked to vote £500 a year for three years for the purposes of the laboratory, then approaching completion. This proposal was fought with the utmost bitterness by Sanderson's opponents, the anti-vivisectionists including E. A. Freeman,John Ruskin and Bishop Mackarness of Oxford. Ultimately the money was granted by 412 to 244 votes.In 1895 Sanderson was appointed
Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, resigning the post in 1904. In 1899 he was created abaronet . His attainments, both inbiology andmedicine , brought him many honours. He was Croonian Lecturer to the Royal Society in 1867 and 1877 and to theRoyal College of Physicians in 1891. He gave theHarveian Oration before the College of Physicians in 1878, acted as President of theBritish Association atNottingham in 1893 and served on threeRoyal Commission s: on Hospitals (1883), onTuberculosis , Meat and Milk (1890), and on a University for London (1892).He died in Oxford on
23 November 1905 .ee also
Discoveries of anti-bacterial effects of penicillium moulds before Fleming References
*Royal Commission on Tuberculosis: "Report of the Royal Commission appointed to Inquire into the Effect of Food derived from Tuberculous Animals on Human Health". London, 1895
External links
* [http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/people/data?id=per59 Picture, biography, and bibliography] in the
Virtual Laboratory of theMax Planck Institute for the History of Science
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