


Edward Long Fox as depicted in George Munro Smith's book The History of the Bristol Royal Infirmary
The Long Fox
Memorial Lecture
One of the Lectures given each year is designated the Long Fox Memorial Lecture.
Most people assume that this lecture is a memorial for Edward Long Fox who built Brislington House Asylum and was a famous alienist as well as a physician at the Bristol Infirmary.
This annual lecture was in fact set up in 1902 in memory of his grandson, Edward Long Fox junior who was a prominent physician at the Infirmary.
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His achievements
Edward Long Fox, junior was the son of Dr. Francis Kerr Fox, of Brislington House, and grandson of Edward Long Fox, senr who built Brislington House. He was born in 1832, and received his early education from a private tutor, and at the Bath Grammar School. He was sent to Shrewsbury School in 1845, and in 1850 went to Balliol College, Oxford. He obtained a First Class in Natural Science in 1853; he then studied Medicine at Edinburgh and at St. George's Hospital, London. He took his degree of M.B. at Oxford in 1857, and the M.D. in 1861.
He was elected Physician to the Bristol Infirmary on September 3rd, 1857, and resigned in August 1877 in accordance with the twenty years rule. His physician colleagues at the infirmary included: William Budd, Frederick Brittan, Alexander Fairbrother and John Beddoe.
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”,
From 1869 to 1874 he lectured on Medicine and Pathological Anatomy at the Bristol Medical School, in which he took a keen interest. He felt the importance of a good medical library, and considered that this, and a large and convenient room in which professional meetings could be held, should be in connection with the University College. He was amongst the first members of the Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Society, founded in 1874.
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 a standard text. 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”.
In 1870 he was made a Fellow of the London Royal College of Physicians and in 1882 gave the Bradshaw Lecture there. His second major work, The Influence of the sympathetic on disease (1885), was based on his Bradshaw Lecture and was again regarded by contemporaries as a standard text.
On June 2nd, 1888, he gave a dinner to a number of medical men at the Queen's Hotel, Clifton, in connection with a movement then on foot to establish a medical library. So successful was he in advocating this, that no less than £1,200 was promised by those present at the dinner. The Medico-Chirurgical Society's Library was founded in 1890 and in 1892 was combined with those of the Bristol Medical School, Royal Infirmary and General Hospital and formed the core of the University of Bristol Medical Library. The Medico-Chirurgical Society books were formally donated to the University in 1925.
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His services at Clifton College (to which he was appointed Physician in 1862), and to many other local philanthropic and educational institutions, have been described elsewhere.
He was a frequent contributor to discussions, etc., at Medical Societies, and in 1894 was President of the British Medical Association. In his Presidential Address to the British Medical Association 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 1894 he was also elected President of the National Temperance League. His last paper in 1898, was on the “Physical advantages of abstinence”.
Besides many contributions to journals, he published two books, The Influence of the Sympathetic on Disease, and The Pathological Anatomy of the Nervous Centres, both of which were considered standard works at the time.
He died, much lamented, on March 28th, 1902.
