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Theodore M. Brown and Elizabeth Fee

Theodore M. Brown is with the Departments of History and of Community and Preventive Medicine at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. Elizabeth Fee is with the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md.

Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Theodore M. Brown, PhD, Department of History, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 (e-mail: theodore_brown{at}urmc.rochester.edu).

JAMES CRICHTON-BROWNE was one of the most famous and respected physicians in late-19th- and early-20th-century Great Britain. He was born on November 29, 1840, in Edinburgh, Scotland to a distinguished medical family. His father, Dr William Alexander Francis Browne, a pioneer in the humane treatment of the insane, was one of the first "medical commissioners in lunacy" in Scotland. His mother, Magdalene Howden Balfour, was the grand-niece of the famous geologist James Hutton and the sister of 4 brothers who became distinguished physicians.¹

Crichton-Browne graduated in medicine from Edinburgh in 1862. His early interest in psychiatry was evident in his third-year dissertation on "The Psychical Diseases of Early Life" and his MD thesis on "Hallucinations." He first served as assistant medical officer at the Devon, Derby, and Warwick county asylums and as medical superintendent of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne city asylum. From 1866 to 1875, he was medical director of the West Riding Asylum at Wakefield, and he made Wakefield famous as a model asylum and as a center for research on nervous and mental diseases.² There he established the first laboratory in neuropathology in Great Britain and in 1871 began the pioneering West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports.³ In 1878, along with several other outstanding neurologists, he founded Brain, a journal dedicated to neurological and neuropsychiatric research.

In 1875, Crichton-Browne was appointed lord chancellor’s visitor in lunacy, a post he would hold for 47 years. In that position, he vigorously promoted the needs of the mentally afflicted in Great Britain, both those who were institutionalized and those who were not. He became a major figure in London social and public life and a leading spokesman on science and medicine. In 1878 he was elected president of the Medico-Psychological Association and in 1883 fellow of the Royal Society, his nomination for the latter being seconded by Charles Darwin. In 1886, he was knighted by Queen Victoria.

Crichton-Browne was regarded as an authority on all aspects of medicine, public health, and social reform.^{1(p298–p299)} He expressed his influential views in a prolific series of papers, addresses, reports, and letters to the press. He supported the campaign for the open-air treatment of tuberculosis, the hygienic control of venereal disease, and the reform of housing for the working classes as the best means to improve their physical and mental health.⁴ It was in this spirit of reform that in 1898 he took on the rising public health issue of dental hygiene and the need for school-based interventions. Crichton-Browne’s neuropsychiatric interests, his public health commitments, and his well-honed rhetorical skills are all evident in this excerpt from his oration before the Eastern Counties Branch of the British Dental Association in 1892.

Crichton-Browne died on January 31, 1938, at the age of 97. He was widely honored on his death as "The Last of the Great Victorians."^1(p294)

Accepted for publication December 7, 2003.

References

1. Easterbrook CC. Obituary: Sir James Crichton-Browne. Edinburgh Med J. 1938;45:294–301.

2. Obituary: Sir James Crichton-Browne. Br Med J. 1938;1:311–312.

3. Viets HR. West Riding, 1871– 1876. Bull Inst Hist Med. 1938;6: 477–487.

4. Rolleston JD. Sir James Crichton-Browne. In: Wickham Legg LG, ed. The Dictionary of National Biography, 1931–1940. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press; 1949:106–107.

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