William Cornish (buried 1897)

Obituary from Plarr's lives on line of the fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons

livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk

Cornish, William Robert (1828 - 1897)

by Royal College of Surgeons of England

Asset Name E001279 - Cornish, William Robert (1828 - 1897) Title Cornish, William Robert (1828 - 1897) Author Royal College of Surgeons of England Identifier RCS: E001279 Publisher London : Royal College of Surgeons of England Publication Date 2011-08-19 Subject Medical Obituaries Description Obituary for Cornish, William Robert (1828 - 1897), Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Language English Source Plarr's Lives of the Fellows Full Name Cornish, William Robert Date of Birth September 1828 Place of Birth Butleigh, Somerset, UK Date of Death 19 October 1897 Place of Death Worthing, UK Occupation General surgeon Titles/Qualifications CIE 1880 MRCS December 17th 1852 FRCS June 11th 1868 Details Born at Corvill, Butleigh, Somersetshire, in September, 1828, son of William Cornish, and was educated at St George's Hospital, where he obtained the William Brown Scholarship and the Benjamin Brodie Gold Medal for Clinical Surgery. After acting for some time as House Surgeon at the Royal Sea-Bathing Infirmary, Margate, he gained, on April 1st, 1854, after competition, an appointment in the medical service of the East India Company which that body had offered to St George's Hospital.

He was posted to the Madras Presidency as Assistant Surgeon in 1854, and proceeded in charge of troops in the Roxburgh Castle. During the first four years of his service he held various civil and military charges, and in 1858 was selected to act as Secretary to the Inspector-General of Hospitals. In addition to his official duties he edited the *Madras Quarterly Journal of Medical Science*, and wrote papers on the treatment of dysentery by large doses of ipecacuanha, on enteric fever in India, on prison dietaries, and on cholera in Madras. He was a member of an important Commission for the reorganization of medical establishments in India in 1865-1866, was Secretary to the Medical Fund from 1864-1870, and in 1870 was appointed first Sanitary Commissioner for the Madras Presidency. In 1871 he drew up the Census Report of the Madras Presidency. In 1877 an immense amount of labour and responsibility devolved upon him in connection with the famine of that year. Sir Richard Temple was sent by the Government of India as Famine Delegate, and advocated a ration which Surgeon General Cornish, from his professional knowledge, considered inadequate for the starving natives. He contended that the Government ration doled out was insufficient properly to support life, and that thereby lives were unnecessarily sacrificed. A long discussion took place between Sir Richard Temple and Surgeon General Cornish, the latter being heartily supported by the Lancet and the press generally. Eventually the authorities had to give way, the diet recommended by Surgeon General Cornish was adopted, and the slow-starvation ration stopped. Further loss of life was thus checked. During this trying period Cornish was strongly supported by the Duke of Buckingham at the head of the Government of Madras. After saving countless lives he received the modest reward of the CIE.

In 1880 he was appointed Surgeon General over the heads of many seniors, and retired in April, 1885. He served as member of the Madras Legislative Council from 1888-1885, and in this capacity materially assisted in the framing of the Local Government Bill for the Presidency and in compiling the Famine Code, which has since proved of such service to India.

Returning to England, Cornish lived a quietly active life almost to the last. He was appointed Hon Physician to the Queen, and busied himself as a Governor of St George's Hospital. He was a member of the Council of the British Medical Association, of the British Institute of Preventive Medicine, the Sanitary Assurance Association, and attended councils regularly, his advice in matters of tropical hygiene being much sought after. The British Institute of Preventive Medicine had been amalgamated with the College of State Medicine, of which body he was originally Hon Secretary and Treasurer, and he passed from the Council of the College to that of the Institute. He died at his residence - Corvill, Shelley Road, Worthing - on October 19th, 1897, and was buried in Heene Cemetery, Worthing, Sussex. He married the youngest daughter of Dr George Yeates Hunter, of Margate. His only son, Captain William Hunter Cornish, Assistant Secretary to the Government of India, died at Simla.

Lieut-Colonel Crawford gives his promotions as follows: - Assistant Surgeon, Madras (April 1st, 1856), nominated by W H C Plowden, gained Commission as a prize at St George's Hospital; Surgeon (April 1st, 1866); Surgeon Major (July 1st, 1873); Brig-Surgeon (November 1st, 1879); Surgeon General (April 5th, 1880); retired on June 1st, 1885. Never held rank of Deputy Inspector-General, being promoted direct to Surgeon General at the reorganization of 1880. Good Service Pension, Nov 18th, 1885.

Publications: *Reports on the Nature of the Food of the Inhabitants of the Madras Presidency, and on the Dietaries of Prisoners in Lillah Jails. Compiled and arranged under the Orders of Government*, 8vo, Madras, 1863. *Report on Cholera in Southern India for the year* 1869, fol, with map, Madras, 1870. Madras Medical and Surgical Regulations, 1870. *Cholera in Southern India*. A record of the progress of cholera in 1870, and résumé of the records of former epidemic invasions of the Madras Presidency, 4 maps, Madras, 1871. *An Inquiry into the Circumstances attending the Outbreak of Cholera in H.M. 18th Hussars at Secunderabad in the month of May*, 1871, map, Madras, 1871. *Memorandum on the Movement of Cholera in Southern India*, 1869-72 : Appendix I, Observations on Professor Pettenkofer's theory of cholera; Appendix II. Observations on the level of subsoil water in selected stations in reference to cholera prevalence, fol, Madras, 1872, bound with Madras Rep San Com, 1871. *Report on the Census of the Madras Presidency*, 1871, with Appendix containing the results of the census arranged in standard forms prescribed by the Government of India: and Supplementary Tables by W R Cornish, 2 vols, fol, Madras, 1874. *A Reply to Sir Richard Temple's Minutes of the 7th and 14th March as to the Sufficiency of a Pound of Grain as the Basis of Famine Wages*, fol, Lawrence Asylum Press, 1877. *The Origin and Diffusion of Cholera*, 8vo, London, 1892.

Sources Crawford's *History of the Indian Medical Service*, 1914, ii, 42, 455, 457 Rights Copyright (c) The Royal College of Surgeons of England Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows Format Obituary Format Asset Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001200-E001299 URL for File 373462 Media Type Unknown