Victor Horsley
From Philosopedia
Horsley, Victor Alexander Haden [Sir] (14 April 1857 - 16 July 1916)
A scientist and professor, Horsley was born in Kensington, London, the son of Rosamund Haden and John Horsley.
He was educated at Cranbrook School, Kent, and studied medicine at University College London and in 1881 Berlin, Germany. He started his career as a house surgeon and registrar at the University College Hospital. From 1884 to 1890 Horsley was Professor-Superintendent of the Brown Institute. In 1886 he was appointed as Assistant Professor of Surgery at the National Hospital for Paralysis and Epilepsy, and as a Professor of Pathology (1887-1896) and Professor of Clinical Surgery (1899-1902) at University College London. An opponent of tobacco and alcohol, he was a humanitarian and supporter for Women's Suffrage. and was an opponent of tobacco and alcohol.
Horsley pioneered studies of the thyroid gland's functions, finding that myxedema and cretinism are caused by a decreased level of the thyroid hormones (hypothyroidism). In experiments with monkeys, he established for the first time that the two could be treated with extracts of the gland.
Horsley was knighted in 1902.
As secretary to a governmental commission formed in 1886 to study the anti-rabies vaccine developed by Louis Pasteur, Sir Victor corroborated his results and created a campaign to vaccine against rabies in the United Kingdom. As a pathologist, he carried out research on bacteria and founded the Journal of Pathology.
His innovative Horsley-Clarke apparatus (developed together with Robert H. Clarke in 1908) was used to perform the so-called stereotactic neurosurgery, whereby a set of precise numerical coordinates are used to locate each brain structure. He was a pioneer in neurosurgery, having operated upon 44 patients.
He wrote Functions of the Marginal Convolutions (1884) and co-authored Experiments upon the Functions of the Cerebral Cortex (1888) and Alcohol and the Human Body (1902).
Stephen Paget in his 1919 biography tells of Dr. Horsley’s agnosticism, adding, “If he had cared to be labeled, he would have written the label himself, Agnostic. . . . Popular theology and sham were utterly distasteful to him.”
