Victor Negus

Sir Victor Ewings Negus, MS, FRCS (6 February 1887 – 15 July 1974) was a British surgeon who specialised in laryngology and also made fundamental contributions to comparative anatomy with his work on the structure and evolution of the larynx. He was born and educated in London, studying at King's College School, then King's College London, followed by King's College Hospital. The final years of his medical training were interrupted by the First World War, during which he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps. After the war, he qualified as a surgeon and studied with laryngologists in France and the USA before resuming his career at King's College Hospital where he became a junior surgeon in 1924.

In the 1920s, Negus worked on aspects of both throat surgery and the anatomy of the larynx, the latter work contributing to his degree of Master of Surgery (1924). His surgical innovations included designs for laryngoscopes, bronchoscopes, oesophagoscopes, an operating table, and tracheotomy equipment. His major publications were The Mechanism of the Larynx (1929) and his work on the clinical text Diseases of the Nose and Throat, starting with the fourth edition of 1937. Negus was also awarded several lectureships and published many medical papers and other works on comparative anatomy and laryngology. He became a senior surgeon at King's College Hospital in 1940 and a consulting surgeon in 1946.

Negus was one of the founders of the British Association of Otorhinolaryngologists, helping to establish his speciality as a discipline within the newly formed National Health Service. He was a member of numerous international and national otolaryngology organisations, and presided over the Fourth International Congress of Otolaryngology in London in 1949. In this period of his career following the Second World War he also worked on the anatomy of the paranasal sinuses, and played a key role in rebuilding and establishing collections of animal dissections used by comparative anatomists.

Negus, who married in 1929 and had two sons, retired in 1952, though he continued to publish on comparative anatomy and the history of medicine. His honours before and after retirement included the Fellowship of King's College, London (1945), an honorary degree (1950), the Lister Medal (1954), a knighthood (1956), honorary fellowships of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (1949) and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (1958), and the Honorary Gold Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (1969). He died in Hindhead, Surrey, aged 87 in 1974.

Early life and education

Victor Ewings Negus was born on 6 February 1887 in Tooting, London, the youngest of three sons of William and Emily Negus (née Ewings). His father was a solicitor, Justice of the Peace, and Deputy Lieutenant for the County of Surrey. Victor's pre-university education took place at King's College School. In 1906, he was awarded a Sambrooke scholarship to King's College London, on the Strand, where his studies for the next three years included premedical and preclinical subjects.

After passing the required examinations, Negus proceeded in 1909 to the next stage of his basic medical education at the nearby King's College Hospital, at that time located on Portugal Street between the Strand and Lincoln's Inn Fields. Negus, in the opening remarks for his 1955 Lister Oration some 43 years later, described it as a "moving ceremony". |group="n"

Surgical career and family

Following his discharge from the army, Negus, again with the advice and guidance of St Clair Thomson, resumed his studies and preparations for a career in throat surgery. |group="n"

At this point, still early in his surgical career, Negus took a different approach to that which was common at the time. Rather than be apprenticed to a leading surgeon in his ENT (ear, nose and throat) speciality, he undertook basic research on the structure of the larynx that led to a higher degree in 1924 and the publication of books and papers on the topic in later years. While engaged in this research, Negus continued his work at King's College Hospital, being appointed junior surgeon in 1924. took place around four years after the death of Negus's father, who had died in the period 1924/5; Negus's mother died in 1939. The engagement announcement stated that Gladys (Eve) was daughter to the late Robert Rennie, an engineer. David's younger brother Richard did not enter the medical profession, marrying in 1960 and settling in the USA. |group="n" Negus's surgical and medical teaching career continued to progress, and he was appointed surgeon in 1931.

Societies and administration

As one of the leading practitioners in his speciality, Negus served in many roles in its organisation and administration at both a national and international level. In particular, he worked closely with the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the body responsible for the accreditation and representation of surgeons practising in England and Wales, and also the organisation that supported him in his researches in comparative anatomy. The Royal College of Surgeons is located in London, and from 1939 to 1941 he was President of its Listerian Society. This organisation subsequently became the British Association of Otorhinolaryngologists – Head and Neck Surgeons (BAO-HNS), which since 2008 has been ENT•UK, which formed as a merger between BAO-HNS and the British Academic Conference in Otolaryngology (BACO). For more on the early history of the organisation founded by Negus and colleagues, see The Role of the British Association of Otolaryngologists (BAOL) in the Development of Otolaryngology in Great Britain from 1943–1968 (Neil Francis Weir, University of London, 2008).|group="n" Following the war, Negus was co-opted to the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1947, and was the first to represent otolaryngology at that level. He was also a member of the college's Court of Examiners, and worked to set up the first examination in otorhinolaryngology that could be taken for the FRCS diploma. Negus was President and host for the 1954 annual meeting of the Collegium Oto-rhino-laryngologicum Amicitiae Sacrum (CORLAS), held in London from 29 August to 1 September, and was the treasurer of CORLAS from 1936 to 1950. Negus was also associated with, and gave talks to, numerous medical societies in the UK and abroad, with his connections ranging from honorary fellowships to corresponding and honorary memberships. These foreign societies included the American Broncho-Esophagological Association, and the countries included Sweden, Denmark, Canada, the USA, Austria, France, Italy, Hungary, and Turkey. |group="n" On 25 July 1949, he received the honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Further tributes followed as an honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) was conferred on him on 17 May 1950 by the University of Manchester. Back in London, the Royal Society of Medicine made him an honorary fellow in 1954. Two years later, Negus was made a knight bachelor with the investiture taking place at Buckingham Palace on 7 February 1956. On 28 August 1958, it was the turn of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland to bestow their honorary fellowship on him. In addition to these awards, Negus continued to give lectures, including an Erasmus Wilson demonstration awarded by the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1953, and the Johns Hopkins Lecture on 30 April 1957. Negus also received the 1963 Gould Award from the William and Harriet Gould Foundation of Chicago, USA, "for his monumental contributions to the science of laryngology".

On 13 February 1969, Negus and two others (Sir Geoffrey Keynes and Sir Stanford Cade) were presented with the Honorary Gold Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. This award, which had only been made thirty times since 1802 prior to the 1969 ceremony, is presented for "liberal acts or distinguished labours, researches and discoveries, eminently conducive to the improvement of natural knowledge and of the healing art." The medal was presented by Sir Hedley Atkins, the President of the Royal College of Surgeons, who paid tribute to Negus: "Sir Victor Negus is perhaps the most distinguished of all those who have served the Council as a co-opted member. He has always been known to us as a great research worker and scientist, whose labours earned him the Lister Medal, a man of exceptional integrity and industry and a persistent advocate of the value of tradition in its best sense." |group="n" Negus's status in the history of laryngology in the UK was remarked on in his obituary in The Times, which stated that he "made a worthy fourth to Morell Mackenzie, Felix Semon, and St Clair Thomson". |group="n" In due course, biographical entries appeared in volume 6 of Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (1988) and in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). Two photographic portraits of Negus are held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London. As well as archives relating to Negus, the Royal College of Surgeons of England houses in its one of its reserve collections (the Hunterian Museum Collection) over 200 sagittal sections of animals dissected by him. Additional collections of bisected animal heads prepared by Negus are held at the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in London.

Selected publications Books The Mechanism of the Larynx (Heinemann, 1929) Diseases of the Nose and Throat with St Clair Thomson (Cassell, 4th edition 1937; 5th edition 1948; 6th edition 1955) Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Larynx (Heinemann, 1949) Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Nose and Paranasal Sinuses (Livingstone, 1958) The Biology of Respiration (Williams and Wilkins, 1965)

Articles 1924: "The Course of Endoscopy in Chevalier Jackson's Service". The Journal of Laryngology & Otology 39 (3): 145–149 1957: "The Evolutionary History of Man from the Evidence of the Nose and Larynx". Archives of Otolaryngology 66 (4): 414–429 1958: "Obituary: Dr. Chevalier Jackson". The Journal of Laryngology & Otology 72 (10): 843–844 1960: "Further Observations on the Air Conditioning Mechanism of the Nose". Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 27 (3): 171–204 1968: "Sir St. Clair Thomson (1859–1943)". Archives of Otolaryngology 87 (6): 667–672 1971: "Voice". Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 48 (6): 369–376

Named lectures 1924 Arris and Gale Lecture: "On the Mechanism of the Larynx" 1930 Semon Lecture: "Observations on Semon's Law" 1954 Hunterian Lecture: 1955 Lister Oration: 1957 Johns Hopkins Lecture: