Dr. Mackenzie has for many years occupied a prominent position not only as a specialist but as a champion of specialism, and has exhibited considerable persistence in his advocacy of any cause with which the interests of specialism were connected. Some years ago, when most of the special hospitals were excluded from participation in the London Hospital Sunday Fund, Dr. Morell Mackenzie led the attack upon the position taken up by the committee, with the result that the treasurer of the Fund resigned, and a modification of procedure took place. Dr. Mackenzie, among the other honorary memberships of foreign societies which have been conferred upon him, is one of the two honorary Fellows of the American Laryngological Association, Signor Garcia being the other. He has invented a number of instruments or modifications of instruments for the treatment of throat diseases, and has written copiously on the subject. His principal works are entitled “On the Use of the Laryngoscope in Diseases of the Throat,” “Essays on Throat Diseases,” “Diphtheria,” “Hay Fever,” and “Diseases of the Throat and Nose.” He has also written the article on Diseases of the Larynx in Reynolds’s “System of Medicine.”
Dr. Morell Mackenzie claims that his experience as to diseases of the throat amply justifies and necessitates specialism. “The scientific literature relating to these,” he says (Fortnightly Review, June 1885), “dates from little more than twenty-five years back, and already it has grown to a bulk that would surfeit the voracity of the most persevering bookworm, and it goes on increasing and multiplying in a manner that makes one long for a Malthus to preach some degree of moderation to its producers. Every week, every day brings one books, pamphlets, articles, lectures, reprints about all sorts of uncomfortable things in itis and osis , as seen in the throats of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Danes, Russians, Americans, and all the other offspring of Babel. A certain proportion of these, no doubt, are of great value, but not a few might be consigned to the wastepaper basket without serious loss to science; all must be read, however, lest some grains of wheat should be thrown away with the chaff. Several periodicals dealing exclusively with diseases of the throat appear with praiseworthy regularity; and there are also societies, associations, &c., founded for the same purpose, each of which, of course, issues its yearly volume of Transactions.... This may give some faint idea of the herculean labour which the specialist who wishes to keep abreast of the progress of knowledge in his own subject from the literary point of view alone has to undergo; and it must be remembered that in medicine reading is after all only subsidiary to the practical work by which skill is perfected and experience gathered and extended.”
The subject of animal parasites upon and in the human body, while certainly not one of the most attractive on a superficial view, has yet been found to yield scientific material of the highest interest, and has required great energy and care to produce satisfactory results. Among British workers in this field none is more widely known than Dr. Thomas Spencer Cobbold, F.R.S.
Dr. Cobbold is the third son of the late Rev. Richard Cobbold, rector of Wortham, Suffolk, the author of the striking “History of Margaret Catchpole,” and his grandmother, Mrs. Cobbold, was a zealous geological collector in the early days of geology, having a fossil species of mollusc (Nucula Cobboldiæ ) named in her honour. The subject of this notice was born at Ipswich in 1828, and educated for some years by the Rev. H. Burrows, at Yarmouth, and afterwards at the Charterhouse.
Young Cobbold entered upon the study of medicine at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital in 1844, as pupil of Mr. Crosse, F.R.S. Later he proceeded to Edinburgh, and became class-assistant to Professor Hughes Bennett, and prosector to Professor Goodsir, then at the height of his career. Such men, and especially Goodsir, exercised a great awakening influence on young Cobbold, and deepened his strong tendencies towards anatomical research. In 1851 Dr. Cobbold graduated on the same day as Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, now Waynflete Professor of Physiology at Oxford, and the late Dr. Charles Murchison, all three being gold-medallists. After studying for some time in Paris, Dr. Cobbold on his return to Edinburgh was appointed curator of the Anatomical Museum, and became active in dissecting specimens of animals received at the museum. Among others his memoir on the giraffe and other ruminants formed the basis of his article Ruminantia, contributed to Todd and Bowman’s Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology. When the lamented Edward Forbes was elected to the chair of Natural History, Dr. Cobbold’s attention was powerfully attached to geology, and for some years he made excursions with his class, and collected large numbers of fossils. More distant excursions to Arran, the Yorkshire and Devonshire coasts, the Isle of Wight, &c., supplied Dr. Cobbold with specimens of great service in illustrating the Swiney Lectures, which he afterwards delivered for five years with marked success at the British Museum and at the Royal School of Mines (1868-72). So popular did these lectures become that towards the close of the last course many of the visitors could not find seats.
After the death of Edward Forbes, Dr. Cobbold resigned his appointments in Edinburgh, and became Lecturer on Botany at St. Mary’s Hospital. Two years later he transferred his services to the Middlesex Hospital, lecturing there for thirteen years on Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. During his connection with the Middlesex Hospital he took up the branch of zoology and medicine with which his name will be most distinctively associated. During three successive years he examined the bodies of animals dying at the Zoological Gardens, especially with a view to discovering the presence of parasitic worms in them. Many papers were contributed by him to the Linnean and Zoological Transactions and Proceedings, among which we may call attention to “Remarks on all the Human Entozoa” (Zool. Soc. Proc., 1862).
In 1864 Dr. Cobbold was elected F.R.S., and in the same year published his “Introductory Treatise on the Entozoa,” which established his reputation, the Lancet declaring that it formed a noble contribution to medical science and a credit to our national literature. Up to the year 1865 Dr. Cobbold persevered in the pursuit of pure science, refusing all inducements to practice; but finding that after his twenty years of zealous labour, no suitable scientific post opened for him, he at length commenced practice in Wimpole Street, removing later to Harley Street. Here his great knowledge of the habits and treatment of internal worm parasites became available for professional purposes, and his services were largely sought. But scientific pursuits and public lecturing still claimed his attention, and among the achievements of his later years are his book on Tapeworms, which has gone through several editions; his lectures on practical helminthology, entitled “Worms;” a manual of the “Parasites of the Domesticated Animals,” a larger treatise on Parasites, a smaller supplementary work on Human Parasites. In 1873 Dr. Cobbold received the appointment of Professor of Botany at the Royal Veterinary College, and soon afterwards a special chair of helminthology was established for him at the College, for giving instruction on the parasites and parasitic diseases of domesticated animals to veterinary students. In connection with this work. Dr. Cobbold went still more deeply into the parasitic diseases of domestic animals, such as those which caused grouse disease, ostrich and pigeon epidemics, gapes in chickens, &c. He delivered a course of lectures on the “Parasites of Animals employed as Food” at the Society of Arts. He has been the first to describe many new species of internal worms from elephants, horses, cattle, sheep, and dogs. One of the most elaborate of his special memoirs is that in which he has described the parasites of elephants, in the Linnean Society’s Transactions. With these extensive researches in comparative anatomy, Dr. Cobbold has not neglected human parasites of late years, and various papers and lectures of his have commanded much attention and elucidated important points. He contributed fifty short articles on these subjects to Quain’s “Dictionary of Medicine.” As a lecturer Dr. Cobbold’s style is highly popular and pleasing. He possesses to a great degree the power of putting himself on good terms with his audience and keeping them interested. His position in regard to the investigations with which his life has been chiefly occupied has been quite unique.
An extract from his work on Entozoa is an interesting example of a very successful mode of treating this subject. “The happiest, and perhaps after all the most truly philosophic, way of studying the entozoa, is to regard them as a peculiar fauna, destined to occupy an equally peculiar territory. That territory is the widespread domain of the interior of the bodies of man and animals. Each animal or “host” may be regarded as a continent, and each part or viscus of his body may be noted as a district. Each district has its special attractions for particular parasitic forms; yet, at the same time, neither the district nor the continent are suitable localities as a permanent resting-place for the invader. None of the internal parasites ‘continue in one stay;’ all have a tendency to roam; migration is the very soul of their prosperity; change of residence the sine quâ non of their existence, whilst a blockade in the interior, prolonged beyond the proper period, terminates only in cretification and death.”