Edgar Ashworth Underwood

Edgar Ashworth Underwood (9 March 1899 – 6 March 1980) was a Scottish physician who began his career in public health and later became director of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.

Between 1917 and 1919 Underwood served in the Cameron Highlanders. During his early medical training he served as vice-president of the Glasgow Medico-Chirurgical Society and won the Cullen Medal for materia medica and the Hunter medals for midwifery and clinical surgery. In 1929 he was appointed deputy medical officer of health (MOH) in Rotherham and then medical superintendent of Oakwood Sanatorium, 1929–1931. Later he became deputy MOH in Leeds, and then MOH in Shoreditch and in West Ham. His early publications focused on tuberculosis and epidemiology, including the textbook A Manual of Tuberculosis (1931), while simultaneously publishing on history of medicine. He also contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Underwood published history of medicine–related articles regularly in the Royal Society of Medicine Proceedings, and became president of the History of Medicine Society of the Royal Society of Medicine, London, from 1948 to 1950.

Early life and family Edgar Underwood was born in Dumfries, Scotland, on 9 March 1899 to David Underwood, a bus driver, and his wife Janet Grierson. He was schooled at Dumfries Academy, where he became dux (head boy).

In 1949 he married Nancy Waley Singer, daughter of the historian of science and medicine, Charles Singer.

History of medicine specialism Underwood and A. D. Lacaille in the Director's Room at The Wellcome Historical Medical Museum Underwood was interested in the history of medicine from early in his career.

In 1962, he published a revised edition of Charles Singer's A Short History of Medicine. His Life of Edward Jenner was never published.

Selected publications Articles

Books A Manual of Tuberculosis for Nurses. E. & S. Livingstone, Edinburgh, 1931. (2nd 1938, 3rd 1945) (Introduction by J. R. Currie) Annual Report on the Health Services for the Year 1937, in the County Borough of West Ham A Short History of Medicine. 2nd edition. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1962. (With Charles Singer) Boerhaave's Men at Leyden and After. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1977. ISBN 085224312X Edward Jenner: The man and his work. The Jenner Trust, c. 1985.