University of Edinburgh, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, United Kingdom
After private instruction at home, John Burdon-Sanderson entered the University of Edinburgh in 1847 to study medicine, and qualified as Doctor of Medicine in 1851.
Career
Achievements
Membership
Royal Society
1867
Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, St. James's, London SW1Y 5AG, United Kingdom
John Burdon-Sanderson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1867.
Royal College of Physicians
1871
Royal College of Physicians, 11 Saint Andrews Place Regent's Park, London NW1 4LE, United Kingdom
The Royal College of Physicians elected him a fellow in 1871.
Awards
Baly Medal
Royal College of Physicians, 11 Saint Andrews Place Regent's Park, London NW1 4LE, United Kingdom
In 1880, John Scott Burdon-Sanderson received the Baly Medal by the Royal College of Physicians of London.
University of Edinburgh, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, United Kingdom
After private instruction at home, John Burdon-Sanderson entered the University of Edinburgh in 1847 to study medicine, and qualified as Doctor of Medicine in 1851.
Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, 1st Baronet, was a British physiologist, who served as Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford and was responsible for much original work in fields ranging from the recording of blood-pressure to the electromotive phenomena associated with muscular contraction and the reactions of certain plant fibres.
Background
Ethnicity:
John Burdon-Sanderson was a member of a well known Northumbrian family.
John Burdon-Sanderson was born on December 21, 1828, at Jesmond, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the son of Richard Burdon, a onetime Oxford don, who later severed his connection with the Church of England and became active in evangelical work, and Elizabeth Sanderson, daughter of Sir James Sanderson, a London merchant, who was twice lord mayor of London.
Education
After private instruction at home, Burdon-Sanderson entered the University of Edinburgh in 1847 to study medicine, and qualified as Doctor of Medicine in 1851, being particularly influenced by John Hughes Bennett, Professor of Institutes of Medicine. During his student period, Burdon-Sanderson read papers on Vegetable Irritability and on the Metamorphosis of Red Blood Cells, both reporting some experimental observations.
In the autumn of 1851, Burdon-Sanderson travelled to Paris, where he studied chemistry in the laboratories of Charles Gerhardt and Charles Wurtz, and attended Claude Bernard’s lectures on physiology. Late in 1852, he settled in London to practice medicine.
In 1853, John Burdon-Sanderson was appointed medical registrar at St. Mary’s Hospital, where he later served as lecturer on botany (1854 - 1855) and on medical jurisprudence (1855 - 1862). He was medical officer of health for the parish of Paddington from 1856 to 1867 and inspector for the medical department of the Privy Council from 1860 to 1865. The duties attached to these positions led him into his first work in pathology. He also served on the staff's of the Brompton Hospital for Consumption (1859 - 1863; 1865 - 1871) and Middlesex Hospital, which was finally closed in 2005 (1863 - 1870).
About 1870, Burdon-Sanderson resigned his hospital appointments in order to devote himself exclusively to scientific research. In the same year, he was appointed professor of practical physiology and histology at University College, London, succeeding Michael Foster. In 1874 he succeeded William Sharpey as Jodrell professor of human physiology at University College and remained there until 1882, when he became the first occupant of the Waynflete chair of physiology at Oxford University. His appointment met with violent opposition from anti-vivisectionists at Oxford (he was notorious for having coauthored a guide to vivisection), and funds for a laboratory of physiology were secured only with great effort. He resigned the Waynflete chair in 1895 to become Regius professor of medicine at Oxford. During his tenure in this chair, several essential reforms were achieved, including the creation of a complete course in pathology and bacteriology.
Burdon-Sanderson’s reputation in pathology resulted primarily from his pioneer experimental investigations of contagious diseases and the infective processes. These began with his demonstration in 1865 of the particulate nature of the infective agent in cattle plague and with his confirmation in 1867 of Jean Villemin’s experiments on the inoculability of tuberculosis in animals. Although he was generally considered one of the leading exponents in England of the germ theory of disease, there is an ambiguity in his views that makes it difficult to summarize his position simply. In 1869, in his widely discussed work, "On the Intimate Pathology of Contagion," he confirmed Auguste Chauveau’s conclusion that the contagium in vaccine lymph was particulate, since the aqueous portion of the lymph was inactive while the solid portion was active. At the same time, he suggested that the infective particles were probably "organised beings" which owed their pathogenicity to their organic development. But when he later demonstrated that bacteria were invariably present in septicemia and pyemia, he avoided the conclusion that the bacteria were directly causative; and as late as 1877 he held that "there is but one case (splenic fever) in which the existence of a disease germ has been established" (Nature, 17 (1877), 86). His cautious attitude toward the germ theory resulted from the conflicting nature of the evidence then available, and from his own tendency toward theoretical skepticism. Although not unreasonable, this caution obscures his position as a prophet of the germ theory.
In physiology, Burdon-Sanderson’s earliest work dealt with the effects of respiratory movements on the circulation (Croonian lecture, 1867), but he later devoted himself almost exclusively to electrophysiological investigations, most notably those on the leaf of Dionaea muscipula (the Venus’s-flytrap). While experimenting on insectivorous plants for Charles Darwin in 1873, he found that a pronounced electrical current accompanied the familiar closing of the flytrap leaf after stimulation of its excitable hairs. He suggested that this current was indicative of rapidly propagated molecular changes in the leaf cells, and compared this process with the corresponding process in active animal muscle.
Like Michael Foster at Cambridge, Burdon-Sanderson was an important force in establishing physiology as an independent discipline in England. He urged the adoption of the experimental approach to pathology as well as to physiology, and from 1871 to 1878 he was professor superintendent of the newly created Brown Institution, the first laboratory for pathology in England. Among his students at University College, London, were William Bayliss, Francis Gotch, Victor Horsley, William Osier, and G. J. Romanes. The group that later worked under him at Oxford - although it included Gotch - was, in general, less eminent.
In 1880, John Scott Burdon-Sanderson received the Baly Medal by the Royal College of Physicians of London.
In 1880, John Scott Burdon-Sanderson received the Baly Medal by the Royal College of Physicians of London.
Royal Medal,
United Kingdom
In 1883, John Burdon-Sanderson received the Royal 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 and pathology.
In 1883, John Burdon-Sanderson received the Royal 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 and pathology.