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Sir Thomas Spencer Wells

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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SIR THOMAS SPENCER WELLS, 1ST Bart. (1818-1897), English surgeon, was born at St Albans on the 3rd of February 1818, and received his medical education in Leeds, Dublin and St Thomas's Hospital, London (M.R.C.S. 1841). From 1841 to 1848 he served as a surgeon in the navy, and in 1848 he went to Paris to study pathology. In 1853 he settled in London, and took up ophthalmic surgery, interrupting his work to go out to the East in the Crimean War. In 1854 he became surgeon to the Samaritan Free Hospital for Women and Children, London. His reputation in surgery had obtained for him in 1844 the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, and he subsequently became a member of council, Hunterian professor of surgery and pathology (1878), President (1882) and Hunterian Orator (1883). In 1883 he was made a baronet. His name is best known in connexion with his successful revival of the operation of ovariotomy, which had fallen into disrepute owing to the excessive mortality attending it; and in his skilful hands, assisted by modern surgical methods, the operation lost almost all its danger. His book on Diseases of the Ovaries was published in 1865. Sir Spencer Wells married in 1853 Miss Elizabeth Wright, and had a son and daughters. He died on the 31st of January 1897. His estate at Golder's Hill, Hampstead, was sold after his death to the London County Council and converted into a public park.