The exertions of Charles Murchison, who died before Budd, though much younger, were largely devoted to controverting Budd’s views on the germ theory of zymotic diseases. He belonged to the same Aberdeenshire family from which Sir Roderick Murchison the geologist sprang, and was born in Jamaica in 1830. His father, himself a physician, spent his latter days in Elgin, where his son Charles was at first educated. As early as 1845 he entered Aberdeen University, but in 1847-8 he commenced medical study at Edinburgh, and in successive years gained numerous distinctions and considerable note as a diligent and successful student. In 1850 he was Syme’s house-surgeon. In August 1857, when he graduated, he received the gold medal for his thesis on the Pathology of Morbid Growths. He further studied at the Rotunda, Dublin, and in Paris, whence he went to India, being appointed Professor of Chemistry to the Medical College, Calcutta. In this office he was both successful as an experimenter and as an expositor. Later, he went with the army on the British Expedition against Burmah, and utilised the opportunity to make valuable observations on the climate and diseases of Burmah, which he afterwards published.
Returning to England in 1855, Murchison became a member of the London College of Physicians, Physician to the Westminster General Dispensary, and Demonstrator of Anatomy at St. Mary’s Hospital. In 1856 he was appointed Assistant-Physician to King’s College Hospital, which office he resigned in 1860, and joined the staff of the Middlesex Hospital. He further held from 1856 the post of Assistant-Physician to the London Fever Hospital, steadily pursuing there as elsewhere his investigations into the nature and causes of zymotic diseases, from which he himself twice suffered in the form of typhus fever, which left in him heart-mischief that ultimately caused his death.
In 1862 appeared Murchison’s work on “The Continued Fevers of Great Britain,” dealing especially with typhus, typhoid, and relapsing fevers. In this he treats exhaustively the history, geographical range, causation, symptoms, treatment, and many other questions connected with fevers, and endeavours especially to reduce his observations to a numerical expression. His strong conviction was that these diseases are preventable, and that they originate in certain unhealthy and impure conditions capable of generating specific poisons in each case. But as he commenced his work at the London Fever Hospital believing that typhus and typhoid fever were mere varieties of one disease, in spite of Stewart’s and Jenner’s publications, so he maintained to the last that Budd’s view as to the germ origin of typhoid fever was erroneous, and that even if typhoid were communicable by germs, it could arise anew when favouring conditions of decomposition occurred. He regarded it as proved that typhoid fever is constantly appearing where decomposing sewage is present, but where every effort fails to detect contamination from a previous typhoid patient.
Murchison’s work was at once recognised as a standard one. The first edition was rapidly sold, and it was translated into German. The publication of a second edition was, however, delayed till 1873, owing to Murchison’s strong desire to make his book as complete statistically as possible. The first edition was based on 6703 cases of continued fever admitted into the London Fever Hospital in the years 1848-57, but the second included the results of a far larger number, 28,863, admitted during 1848-70, thus giving the entire medical history of the fever hospital from the time that the different continued fevers were first distinguished in 1848. Energy and resolution of the most intense description are indicated by such a labour. This work had to be done in the intervals of growing practice and hospital teaching. By the time he was forty years old Murchison was one of the leading London physicians, and continued in full work till his death.
It was not only in regard to fevers that Murchison held a conspicuous place and published works of great value. In 1868 he published an excellent series of “Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Liver,” which reached a second edition in 1877, when he added to them the Croonian Lectures on “Functional Derangements of the Liver,” delivered at the College of Physicians in 1874. In 1871, when St. Thomas’s new hospital was opened, Murchison was invited to join its staff as full physician and joint-lecturer on medicine. In this growing school he found full scope for his great talent as a clinical teacher. Of his success in this capacity the Lancet said[11]—“His teaching was a reflex of his singular lucidity of thought and expression, which not only attracted the student with its distinctness and brilliancy, but furnished him with a method on which to found his own facts and observations.” His inaugural address as President of the Pathological Society in 1877 gave further proof of his marked originality of thought.
Murchison’s accomplishments and personal attractiveness were as remarkable as his professional talents and industry. In botany, zoology, chemistry, and geology he had very wide knowledge, and he edited the palæontological memoirs of his friend Hugh Falconer, the explorer of the Miocene fauna of the Siwalik Hills. Fly-fishing was his favourite recreation. “In personal appearance,” says the Lancet, “Dr. Murchison was slightly below middle stature, and before the commencement of his fatal illness, of sturdy robust build, with the appearance of one well fitted to bear the trials and struggles of life. His head was large, the forehead high and full, the hair black, and eyes of surprising brilliancy and power of expression. In manner he was reserved, sparing of speech, and free from that impulsiveness which hails the ordinary acquaintances of life as esteemed friends. To those who knew him intimately, however, his full character was revealed, and they found in him a depth of love, tenderness, and sympathy, together with a constancy and devotion in friendship, rarely found in more demonstrative natures.” He attached himself particularly to the younger members of his profession, and never spared time or trouble in assisting them with his counsel and sympathy. He suffered severely from heart disease for several years before his death, which took place suddenly in the interval between the departure of one patient and the announcement of another, on the 23d April 1879.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Obituary notice, May 3, 1879, p. 645.