Robert Adams (physician)
Robert Adams (1791 – 13 January 1875) was an Irish surgeon and was three times President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), in 1840, 1860 and 1867.
Early life and education
He was born in Ireland, studied at Trinity College, Dublin between 1810 and 1814 and received his B.A. in 1814. He began his medical training under William Hartigan and George Stewart, leading Dublin surgeons. He was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1818 and then went abroad to complete his medical and surgical training. Adams did not take the M.B. degree until 1842. In that year he became a M.D., and in 1861 received the newly-instituted qualification of Master in Surgery.
The greater part of Adams' anatomical studies were undertaken in the College of Surgeons under Abraham Colles. 1816, he obtained the Letters Testimonial, and on the 2nd November, 1818, he was promoted to the Membership of the College. He was elected surgeon to the Jervis Street Hospital and the Richmond Hospital. He took part in founding the Richmond Hospital Medical School, later Carmichael School of Medicine and taught there for many years.[1]
Career
He later became three times president of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Dublin Pathological Society, and, in 1862, both Surgeon in Ordinary to the Queen in Ireland, and Regius Professor of Surgery at the University of Dublin.[2] His work focussed on cardiac, respiratory, vascular and joint diseases, and emphasised postmortem examination. His fame chiefly rests on his ‘Treatise on Rheumatic Gout, or Chronic Rheumatic Arthritis of all the Joints’ (8vo, London, 1857, with an Atlas of Illustrations in 4to; 2nd edition, 1873). This work, though describing a disease more or less known for centuries, contains so much novel and important research as to have become the classical work on the subject.[3] He published a number of important medical texts, including Diseases of the Heart, but it was his work on gout, from which he suffered himself, that made him famous.[4] Stokes–Adams disease is named after himself and William Stokes.
Death
He was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.[4]
References
- ^ Cameron, Charles Alexander (1886). Cameron, Charles Alexander (1830-1921) History of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and of the Irish schools of medicine : including a medical bibliography and a medical biography. Dublin : Fannin, 1886. Fannin. p. 395.
- ^ Boylan, Henry (1998). A Dictionary of Irish Biography, 3rd Edition. Dublin: Gill and MacMillan. p. 1. ISBN 0-7171-2945-4.
- ^ Stephen, Leslie (1885). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol 1. London: Smith, Elder. pp. 100–101.
- ^ a b Langtry, Joe and Nikki Carter, eds. Mount Jerome: A Victorian Cemetery. Staybro Printing Ltd., Dublin 1997. p. 40
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