Sir Walter Langdon-Brown, born of robust Puritan stock, was a distinguished physician, teacher, medical historian and humanist at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, before becoming Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge. His contributions to clinical medicine were wide in relating symptoms and signs of disease to physiology, putting therapeutics on a scientific basis, showing the close linkage of the sympathetic nervous system to the ductless glands, and being regarded as a founder of clinical endocrinology. He was the first English physician to relate the work of Freud, Jung and Adler to clinical medicine and a pioneer in psychosomatic medicine and the study of neurotic behaviour.
DownJL. Observations on the ethnic classification of idiots. Clinical Lecture Reports of the Medical Staff of The London Hospital1866;3:259–62
3.
Langdon-BrownW. Some Chapters in Cambridge Medical History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946:113.
4.
Langdon-BrownW. Physiological Principles in Treatment. London: Baillière, Tindall and Cox, 1908; 8th edn., 1942
5.
GarrodAE. A contribution to the study of alkaptonuria. Medico-Chirurgical Transactions1899;82:369–94; Proceedings of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society, NS, 1899;II:130–5
6.
GarrodAE. The Croonian Lectures on inborn errors of metabolism. Delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London on June 18th, 23rd, 25th and 30th, 1908. The Lancet1908;ii:1–7, 73–9, 142–8, 214–20
7.
BearnAG. Archibald Garrod and the Individuality of Man. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993
8.
Langdon-BrownW. (op. cit. ref. 3): p. 93; W. H. Gaskell and the Cambridge Medical SchoolProceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine1939;33:1–12
9.
Langdon BrownW. The Sympathetic Nervous System in Disease. Based on the Croonian Lectures delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1918, London: Henry Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton, 1920
10.
Langdon BrownW. The Endocrines in General Medicine. London: Constable, 1927
11.
Langdon-BrownW. The Integration of the Endocrine System. Horsley Memorial Lecture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935
12.
Langdon-BrownW. The birth of modern endocrinology. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine1946;39:507–510; The Clinical Journal 1946;75:203–7
13.
RiversWHR. Freud's psychology of the unconscious. The Lancet1917;i:912–4
14.
BreathnachCS. WHR Rivers and the hazards of interpretation. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine1993;86:413–6
15.
EvansG. Inaugural Langdon-Brown lecture delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1951. British Medical Journal1952;i:175–81
16.
HorderTJ. Appreciation of Sir Walter Langdon-Brown. St Bartholomew's Hospital Journal1946:60–1
17.
Langdon-BrownW. Thus We are Men. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, 1938
18.
Langdon BrownW. Myth, Phantasy and Mary Rose. London: Adlard & Son & West Newman, 1926
19.
Langdon BrownW. English Medicine and the Cambridge School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932
20.
Langdon-BrownW. (op. cit. ref. 3): Ibid
21.
BattenLW. Appreciation of Sir Walter Langdon-Brown. St Bartholomew's Hospital Journal1946:161–2
22.
Obituary Walter Langdon-Brown. The Lancet1946;ii:546–8
