Victor Horsley

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Victor Horsley
Victor Horsley

Sir Victor Alexander Haden Horsley (born April 14, 1857 in Kensington, London , † July 16, 1916 in Amarah, Iraq ) was a British surgeon , pathologist , physiologist and neurosurgeon .

Live and act

Horsley, son of an artist, attended University College London , where he graduated from Hospital Medical School in 1880 with a B. Sc. completed. From 1882 to 1896 he taught pathology at University College and from 1884 to 1890 he was Brown Professor of Pathology at a physiological research center ( Brown Institution ) at the University of London . He ran a private surgical practice and worked as a surgeon from 1885 at University College Hospital (initially as Assistant Surgeon ) and from 1886 at the National Hospital for Paralyzed and Epileptic in London. In 1899 Horsley was appointed professor of clinical surgery. He then worked as a surgeon at University College Hospital from 1900 to 1906.

During the First World War he served in the British Army and came to Egypt and Mesopotamia. Horsley died in Amarah (south of Baghdad) in 1916 of heat stroke .

Horsley was a pioneer in brain surgery . He was the first to use intraoperative electrical stimulation to localize epileptic foci between 1884 and 1886 . This made him a forerunner of the work of Wilder Penfield . In 1887, just a year after William Macewen, he performed a laminectomy to remove a spinal cord tumor.

In 1908 he invented the Horsley-Clarke apparatus together with his colleague Robert H. Clarke of University College London . This device enabled experimental and therapeutic interventions in deeper structures of vertebrate brains. He also introduced a stereotactic coordinate system for the localization of brain structures.

In animal experiments he was able to prove that the underactive thyroid is the cause of cretinism and myxedema .

Horsley campaigned for equality between women and men, called for free medical care for workers, and spoke out against nicotine and alcohol abuse.

Honors

In 1886 Horsley was elected as a member (" Fellow ") in the Royal Society , which in 1894 awarded him the Royal Medal . In 1902 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . Also in 1902 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 1910 he was a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .

Source and literature

  • Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Horsley, Sir Victor Alexander Haden. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 618.

Web links

Commons : Victor Horsley  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinrich Broerken: About War spinal cord injuries. Univ.-Diss. Berlin, 1920
  2. ↑ Barbara I. Tshisuaka (2005).
  3. ↑ Barbara I. Tshisuaka (2005).
personal data
SURNAME Horsley, Victor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Horsley, Victor Alexander Haden (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British physiologist and neurologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Kensington, London
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 1916
Place of death Amarah, Iraq