Background
Creighton was born on November 22, 1847, in Peterhead, Scotland, the eldest son and second child of Alexander Creighton, timber merchant, and his wife Agnes Brand, who had five sons and three daughters.
Broad St, Aberdeen AB10 1AB, United Kingdom
Enrolling as a medical student at the affiliated Marischal College, Creighton took clinical courses at Edinburgh, and in 1871 passed his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Science examinations at Aberdeen. The university awarded him the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1878.
69 University Rd, Aberdeen AB24 3SW, United Kingdom
In 1864, Creighton won a bursary to King’s College, Aberdeen, where he obtained his Master of Arts degree in 1867.
Broad St, Aberdeen AB10 1AB, United Kingdom
Enrolling as a medical student at the affiliated Marischal College, Creighton took clinical courses at Edinburgh, and in 1871 passed his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Science examinations at Aberdeen. The university awarded him the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1878.
(From the Extinction of Plague to the Present Time This vo...)
From the Extinction of Plague to the Present Time This volume is the continuation of ‘A History of Epidemics in Britain from A.D. 664 to the Extinction of Plague’, and is the completion of the history to the present time.
https://www.amazon.com/History-Epidemics-Britain-II-Extinction-ebook/dp/B00IGHAU9A/?tag=2022091-20
1891
Creighton was born on November 22, 1847, in Peterhead, Scotland, the eldest son and second child of Alexander Creighton, timber merchant, and his wife Agnes Brand, who had five sons and three daughters.
Creighton attended the local school and went on to grammar school in Old Aberdeen. In 1864, he won a bursary to King’s College, Aberdeen, where he obtained his Master of Arts degree in 1867. Enrolling as a medical student at the affiliated Marischal College, he took clinical courses at Edinburgh, and in 1871 passed his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Science examinations at Aberdeen. The university awarded him the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1878.
After graduation, Creighton studied for a year in Vienna under Karl von Rokitansky and in Berlin under Rudolf Virchow. On his return in 1872, he obtained successive annual appointments as surgical registrar at St. Thomas’ Hospital and medical registrar at Charing Cross Hospital, London. He also did part-time research on cancer for the Local Government Board, for whom he worked full-time in 1875 on the physiology and pathology of the breast. These studies, conducted at the Brown Institution, were the subject of his first publications.
Appointed demonstrator of anatomy in the University of Cambridge in 1876, within five years he published the book Bovine Tuberculosis in Man and eleven articles on normal and pathological anatomy in the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, of which he became a coeditor in 1879. In 1881 he unaccountably severed these promising academic associations and went to London. After applying unsuccessfully in 1882 for the chair of pathology at Aberdeen, Creighton assumed the mantle of a dedicated, erudite scholar. He lived and worked alone for the next thirty-seven years.
Apart from a three-month visit to India in 1904 to investigate the plague (financed by the Leigh Browne Trust, founded in 1884 “for the promotion of original research in the biological sciences without any recourse to experiments upon living animals of a nature to cause pain”), he resided within walking distance of the British Museum, whose resources were indispensable to him. In 1918 he bought a small house in a Northamptonshire village and lived peacefully there until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage nine years later.
Creighton’s three-volume translation of August Hirsch’s Handbuch der historisch-geographischen Pathologie, an outstanding accomplishment, appeared between 1883 and 1886. The next several years were devoted to the great task of compiling A History of Epidemics in Britain, whose two volumes, published in 1891 and 1894, earned him lasting distinction. During this period, Creighton also wrote numerous articles for the Dictionary of National Biography, besides making notable contributions on medicine and public health to H. D. Traill’s Social England.
His industry and judgment were not always soundly exercised. A comprehensive article on pathology (1885), commissioned for the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, cast doubt upon the existence of pathogenic bacteria; another on vaccination (1888) was so reactionary and misleading that it provoked vigorous protests from leading medical journals. Especially condemned was the apparent claim, implicit also in his book The Natural History of Cowpox and Vaccinal Syphilis (1887), that vaccination and infantile syphilis were related. Creighton denied this allegation but further blemished his reputation by publishing another polemical volume, Jenner and Vaccination (1889).
He maintained an active interest in pathology. For about a decade beginning around 1898, he visited the London Hospital, where his closest friend and fellow-Aberdonian, the bacteriologist William Bulloch, provided access to pathological specimens and records. Creighton prepared and examined the specimens microscopically at home. His subsequent publications on tuberculosis and cancer were unorthodox and had no impact. Likewise his literary studies on Shakespeare gained no following.
Creighton’s obdurate rejection of bacteria as causal agents of such diseases as tuberculosis and plague was probably instigated by Rokitansky’s humoral theory of pathology and Virchow’s early skepticism about the bacteriologists’ budding claims. Yet he clung perversely to the least defensible features of these doctrines long after their proponents had modified them. A deep-seated faith in miasmata, soil poisons, and seismic disturbances as instigators of epidemics, which doubtless arose from intimate contact with Hirsch’s Handbuch, permeates the History. His accuracy in citation of rare chronicles is undisputed, although R. S. Roberts (1968) claims he sometimes selected historical data that fitted favorite theories. The final keys to Creighton’s controversial career and anachronistic beliefs are concealed within his enigmatic personality.
(From the Extinction of Plague to the Present Time This vo...)
1891Creighton was an anti-vaccinationist. He has been described by historian Roy Porter as the anti-vaccination movement's "most ardent and distinguished spokesmen". Creighton argued that vaccination was poisoning of the blood with contaminated material, which could provide no protection from disease.
Tall and handsome in his prime, Creighton was abstemious, devout, and fond of music. A kind, gentlemanly, self-contained individualist, he upheld his beliefs inflexibly, regardless of consequences.
Nothing is known of whether Creighton was married or not.