Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mahomed, Frederick Henry Horatio Akbar

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1447336Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 35 — Mahomed, Frederick Henry Horatio Akbar1893Norman Moore

MAHOMED, FREDERICK HENRY HORATIO AKBAR (1849–1884), physician, son of the keeper of a Turkish bath, was born at Brighton in April 1849. He began medical studies at an early age at the Sussex County Hospital, and went thence to Guy's Hospital, where he obtained several prizes. He became a member of the College of Surgeons in 1872, and soon after became resident medical officer at the London Fever Hospital. In 1875 he was elected medical tutor at St. Mary's Hospital, and shortly after medical registrar at Guy's Hospital. While discharging the very laborious duties of this office he entered at Caius College, Cambridge, and used to go to Cambridge every evening by the last train in order to perform the pernoctation essential for keeping a term, returning to London by an early morning train. He had taken the degree of M.D. at Brussels, and in 1881 he graduated M.B. at Cambridge, taking no other degree, and in the same year he was elected assistant physician to Guy's Hospital. In 1880 he was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians of London. He was the chief mover in the establishment of a system of obtaining information on diseases by means of replies to printed papers of questions forwarded to practitioners of medicine throughout the country, and worked most laboriously at this ‘collective investigation.’ He made many contributions to the ‘Transactions of the Pathological Society’ (vols. xxvi. xxviii. xxxii. xxxiv. xxxv. xxxvi. xxxvii. xxxviii.), of which the most important is one on the sphygmographic evidence of arterio-capillary fibrosis; and he wrote a long series of papers on the results of the use of the sphygmograph in the investigation of disease in the ‘British Medical Journal.’ To the ‘Transactions of the Medico-Chirurgical Society’ he contributed a valuable paper on the early stages of scarlatinal nephritis, and also published many observations in the Guy's Hospital ‘Reports.’ He died of enteric fever on 22 Nov. 1884, at his house in Manchester Square, London. He had been married twice. He was a tall, muscular man, of a dark complexion, impulsive in manner, and possessed of extraordinary powers of work.

[British Medical Journal, 29 Nov. 1884; personal knowledge; Works.]

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