St Clair Thomson

St Clair Thomson (1859–1943) was a leading British laryngologist and surgeon. After training under Sir Joseph Lister, he became a prominent throat physician to King Edward VII, a Professor at King’s College Hospital, and President of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Life Thomson was born at Fahan (pronounced 'Fawn'), a village in Inishowen in County Donegal on the north coast of Ulster, the northern province in Ireland, the seventh child of the five sons and three daughters of John Gibson Thomson of Ardrishaig, Argyllshire, Scotland, civil engineer, a pupil of Thomas Telford, and his wife Catherine, a daughter of John Sinclair of Lochaline, Morven, Sound of Mull. He was educated at the village school in Ardrishaig till he was ten, when he went to study at King's School, Peterborough, later gaining medical experience in general practice while apprenticed to his eldest brother William Sinclair-Thomson MD. Thomson's medical studies, started privately, continued from 1877 at King's College London. He entered King's College Hospital on 1 October 1877, the same day that Joseph Lister took up his appointment as Professor of Clinical Surgery. He gained the qualifications MRCS (Member of the Royal College of Surgeons) in 1881 and MB (Bachelor of Medicine) in 1883.

Career Thomson went on to work at Queen Charlotte's Hospital and as a surgeon on ships operated by Union-Castle Line on routes to South Africa. This was followed by several years as a physician in Europe, practising medicine in Florence and St Moritz. In the early 1890s he developed his professional interests beyond general practice and turned towards the study of laryngology. Famous laryngologists he visited in Vienna included Leopold von Schrötter and Karl Stoerk, along with the Austrian otologist Ádám Politzer. He also studied with German laryngologist Gustav Killian at Freiburg. and Cancer of the Larynx (1930). Professional societies in which he held positions included the Medical Society of London (President in 1915-16) and the British Medical Association. He was also president of the Royal Society of Medicine from 1925 to 1927 and president of its History of Medicine Section from 1933 to 1935.

Thomson had married in 1901, but his wife Isabella died less than five years later in 1905. Thomson never remarried. His home in Wimpole Street in London, kept by his elder sister Matilda (Maud) Louisa Sinclair-Thomson, housed his collection of Shakespearian prints, miniatures and pharmacy jars. Having settled in Scotland following wartime damage to his London home, Thomson was killed in a street accident in Edinburgh on 29 January 1943 at the age of 83.