Henry Acland

Sir Henry Wentworth Dyke Acland, 1st Baronet, (23 August 181516 October 1900) was an English physician and educator.

Life Henry Acland was born in Killerton, Exeter, the fourth son of Sir Thomas Acland and Lydia Elizabeth Hoare, and educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford. He was elected Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford in 1840, and then studied medicine in London and Edinburgh. Returning to Oxford, he was appointed Lee's reader in anatomy at Christ Church in 1845, was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1847, and in 1851 was appointed Radcliffe librarian and physician to the Radcliffe Infirmary.

Seven years later, he became Regius Professor of Medicine, a post that he retained until 1894. He was also a curator of the university galleries and the Bodleian Library. From 1858 to 1887, he represented his university on the General Medical Council, of which he served as president from 1874 to 1887.

In 1860, he accompanied the then Prince of Wales as his physician on his Canada and the United States tour.

Acland was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1883, and was promoted to a Knight Commander (KCB) in 1884. He was created a baronet in 1890, and ten years later, he died at his house in Broad Street, Oxford together with various pamphlets on sanitary matters. His memoir on the topography of the Troad, with a panoramic plan (1839), was among the fruits of a cruise he made in the Mediterranean for his health.

His son, Colonel Alfred Dyke Acland, married Hon. Beatrice Danvers Smith, daughter of Rt. Hon. W. H. Smith of the Newsagents dynasty on 30 July 1885 and gained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in 1910 in the service of the Royal 1st Devon Yeomanry (Territorial Army). Another son, Theodore Dyke Acland married the daughter of Sir William Gull, a leading London medical practitioner and one of the Physicians-in-Ordinary to HM Queen Victoria.

Marriage and children

He married Sarah Cotton, daughter of William Cotton and Sarah Lane, on 14 July 1846. They had seven sons and a daughter:

Admiral Sir William Alison Dyke Acland, 2nd Baronet (1847–1924) Sarah Angelina Acland (1849–1930) Henry Dyke Acland (1850–1936) Theodore Dyke Acland (1851–1931), the father of Theodore Acland (1890–1960) Herbert Dyke Acland (1855–1877) Sir Reginald Brodie Dyke Acland (1856–1924) Francis Edward Dyke Acland (1857–1943) One of Francis' children was Clemence Margaret Acland (1889–1973) a nature photographer, ornithologist and researcher. Alfred Dyke Acland (1858–1937)

The old Acland Hospital, initially in Wellington Square, Oxford and later on the Banbury Road in Oxford (now part of Keble College), was founded in memory of Acland's wife, Sarah.

Their daughter, Sarah Acland, subsequently lived in Park Town and was an early pioneer of colour photography. Some of her photographs are in the collection of the Museum of the History of Science in Broad Street, opposite the family home.