William A. Sturge

William Allen Sturge (born September 6, 1850 in Bristol , England , † March 27, 1919 ) was an English doctor and archaeologist.

His parents - his father was a surveyor - were Quakers , members of a Puritan religious community in England. He discovered his interest in medicine after injuring his knee at a soccer game and seeing his uncle for treatment.

After studying medicine at Bristol University for two years from 1868, he fell ill with diphtheria and while convalescing rheumatic fever, which delayed the continuation of his studies. He finished his studies in 1873 with a degree from Kings College, London.

From then on he worked at the National Hospital for Paralysis and Epilepsy. In 1876 he went to Paris and studied neurology with Jean-Martin Charcot and pathology with Jean Alfred Fournier .

He became posthumously famous when he first described Sturge Weber Syndrome in 1879 in a six and a half year old girl. The girl had a nevus flammeus on one side of her face and focal seizures on the other side of her body. These seizures - and this wasn't discovered until many decades later - were likely caused by angiomas of the meninges .

From 1880 to 1907 he practiced in Nice . There he was the personal physician of the royal family during Queen Victoria's stays on the French Riviera .

In 1907 he turned to archeology. His interest was in Greek and Etruscan pottery as well as Neolithic and Paleolithic finds. In his museum in Suffolk he brought together 100,000 objects. The Stone Age collection is in the British Museum; the collection of Greek amphorae at the Toronto Museum. He is a co-founder of the Society of Prehistoric Archeology of East Anglia.

Individual evidence

1. ^ The British Friend: A Monthly Journal Chiefly Devoted to the Interests of the Society of Friends . Vol. VIII. — Nos. 1 to XII. William & Robert Smeal, Glasgow 1850, p. 307.
2. ^ GH Brown (Ed.): Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of London Volume 4. Wolstenholme Royal College of Physicians, 1955, p. 352