James Samuel Risien Russell

James Samuel Risien Russell (17 September 1863 – 20 March 1939) was a Guyanese-British physician, neurologist, professor of medicine, and professor of medical jurisprudence.

Early life Russell was of mixed race, born in Demerara, British Guiana (now Guyana), to Hon. William Russell, a Scottish émigré water engineer and sugar plantation owner, and Hon. Mrs Russell, who was of African descent but about whom little is yet known. He was one of four sons with an older brother John and two younger brothers, William (Junior) and Alexander. His father was one of the richest men in the colony. Russell was sent to Scotland as a teenager to continue his education.

Education and career After education from 1880 to 1882 at the Dollar Institute in Scotland, J. S. Risien Russell studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating MB CM in 1886, and MD in 1893 with gold medal. He qualified MRCP in 1891. He went to London for postgraduate study at St Thomas's Hospital and won a British Medical Association (BMA) scholarship in 1895. After study in Paris and Berlin, he was appointed resident medical officer at the National Hospital, Queen Square.

He was the author or co-author of a number of research articles. He contributed articles on neurological disease to Quain's Dictionary of Medicine, Allbutt's A System of Medicine, the Encyclopaedia Medica, and Gibson's Textbook of Medicine.

Russell served as vice-president of the Section of Psychological Medicine and Neurology at the annual meeting of the BMA in London in 1910. He was elected a corresponding member of the Société de Neurologie de Paris.

He clashed with psychiatrists for his belief that patients with psychosis should not be so readily committed to asylums when they might receive better care at home within their families, with support from general practitioners. He disapproved of the freedoms of the "modern girl", which made them "unfit for motherhood and the duties and responsibilities of married life". He died in his consulting rooms, between appointments.

Research by the Windrush Foundation and medical historians has raised the profile of his life and pioneering medical work in recent years.

Selected publications

with F. E. Batten and J. Collier: