Bristol Character:
Edward Long Fox (1832-1902)
Edward Long Fox was educated at Shrewsbury School, Balliol College
(taking a First in the Natural Sciences Tripos 1855), Edinburgh and London.
His grandfather, the first Edward Long Fox (1761 - 1835) – physician to the
Bristol Infirmary (1786-1816) – was a pioneer in the promotion of humane
methods in the management of mental illness. Brislington House was for many
years one of the best known private mental homes in England.
Edward Long Fox junior was elected to the staff of the Bristol Royal
Infirmary in 1857 at the age of 25, where he worked with William Budd. He
was described by John Beddoe as "possessing a mind that was clear, healthy
and serviceable; a zeal and industry of good example". To his medical
students he said "As I have only recently passed the student stage myself I
shall feel pleased, should any one of you notice anything overlooked in my
ward talk and practice that might be of importance in the care and treatment
of the patients, if you would kindly remind me of the fact".
He lived in Church House, Clifton, and was amongst the first members of
the Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Society. His most notable medical
contribution was the control of the typhus epidemic in Bristol in 1863. He
was also very active in the National Association for the Prevention of
Consumption. His first paper, in 1860, was on "Traumatic tetanus", and his
last, in 1898, on the "Physical advantages of abstinence".
His magnum opus, The Pathological anatomy of the nervous centres (1874),
was an attempt to understand and describe the inflammations, degenerations
and neoplasms in the cerebrospinal system. It was regarded at the time as
standard. Fox pictured disease in the nervous system as "Nature’s most
delicate experiment, the results of which he hoped might be better
elucidated by improved micro-pathological methods".
His second major work, The Influence of the sympathetic on disease
(1885), based on his Bradshaw Lecture of 1882, was again regarded by
contemporaries as standard.
In his Presidential Address to the British Medical Association in 1894,
Medical men and the state, he observed that "the troubles of the railway
pace of life" were aiding crime and insecurity. There should, he said, be
emphasis on close co-operation between the natural, the applied and the
social sciences. In this he hoped that the University would provide for "a
good medical library and a large convenient room for professional meetings".
Within weeks of his death in 1902, his friends met in the Chapter House
of Bristol Cathedral to institute "an annual lecture at University College
on some subject connected with medical science, to be known as the Long Fox
Memorial Lecture".
Sources:
A V Neale Medical progress in Bristol 1964
A W Macara Medicine and the state 1995
Jennifer Scherr 12th November 2003
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