D'Arcy Power

Sir D'Arcy Power, (11 November 1855 in Pimlico, London - 18 May 1941) was a British surgeon, medical historian, and contributor of some 200 articles on famous surgeons and other related figures to the Dictionary of National Biography.

Medical career D'Arcy Power was born on 11 November 1855 at 3 Grosvenor Terrace, Pimlico, in London, to Henry Power, himself a surgeon. Power was the eldest son of six boys and five girls. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood and entered New College, Oxford, before transferring to Exeter College. He gave the Bradshaw Lecture for 1918, the Vicary lecture for 1920, and delivered the Hunterian oration in 1925. Power also both taught and examined in medicine and wrote textbooks and articles for a number of medical journals. Power was given the rank of major in the Royal Army Medical Corps when its Territorial Force section was created on 31 July 1908, and was attached to 1st London General Hospital. He was mobilised with the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, and promoted lieutenant-colonel on 22 August. Until 1916 he was based at the officers' hospital at Fishmongers' Hall, and then rejoined the main body of 1st London General Hospital, serving until demobilisation in 1920, He retired from the army on 30 September 1921.

Personal life Power married Eleanor Fosbroke, daughter of the surgeon George Haynes Fosbroke, in 1883; she predeceased him in 1923. They had two sons and a daughter. and during the First World War became a captain and won the Military Cross. He transferred to the Medical Branch of the Royal Air Force on the formation of the new service on 1 April 1918 —taking a permanent commission as a flight lieutenant in 1920 —and ultimately reaching the rank of acting air vice marshal by 1945 when he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire. The younger son, George Henry Fosbroke Power, died at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915 when he was serving as a lieutenant in 6th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment. Power's daughter died young of whooping cough. He was also in 1903 a founding member of the Samuel Pepys Club. After his home was damaged in an air raid in 1940, Power moved in with his son at 53 Murray Road, Northwood, Middlesex, where he died on 18 May 1941.

Notable works Power's more notable standalone works included: William Harvey (1897) on the life of William Harvey; Portraits of Dr William Harvey (1913); Foundations of Medical History (1931); A Short History of Surgery (1933); Mirror for Surgeons, an anthology (1939).