Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Marshall, John (1818-1891)
MARSHALL, JOHN, anatomist and surgeon, born at Ely in Cambridgeshire on 11 Sept. 1818, was the second son of William Marshall, solicitor, of that city, who was also an excellent naturalist. John's elder brother, William (d. 1890), sometime coroner for Ely, was an enthusiastic botanist; his letters in the ‘Cambridge Independent Press’ in 1852 first elucidated the life-history of the American pond weed Anacharis Alsinastrum, which had then been recently introduced into this country. John was educated at Hingham in Norfolk, under J. H. Browne, uncle of Hablot K. Browne (Phiz), and was afterwards apprenticed to Dr. Wales in Wisbech. In 1838 he left Wisbech to enter University College, London, where he came under the influence of Sharpey, who was then lecturing upon physiology. On 9 Aug. 1844 he was admitted a member, and on 7 Dec. 1849 a fellow, of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
For many years he was on terms of intimacy with Robert Liston [q. v.], and occasionally helped that great surgeon in his operations. He commenced practice at 10 Crescent Place, Mornington Crescent. About 1845 he succeeded Thomas Morton [q. v.] as demonstrator of anatomy at University College, London. In 1847 he was appointed an extra assistant surgeon, through the influence of Quain and Sharpey, and their selection created some surprise, as Marshall had shown greater interest in anatomy, and had not even been house-surgeon. Soon after his appointment he moved to George Street, Hanover Square; and thence in 1854 to Savile Row, where he remained until he moved to Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, a few months before his death.
Marshall was appointed professor of surgery at University College in 1866, on the retirement of Mr. Erichsen, who then became Holme professor of clinical surgery—a post in which Marshall also afterwards succeeded him. In 1884, after thirty-three years' active service, and when he had filled all the intermediate steps, he was appointed consulting surgeon to University College Hospital, and he occupied a similar position at the Brompton Hospital for Consumption. He was elected a member of the council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and an examiner in surgery in 1873, and became president in 1883. In 1881 he was selected as the representative of the college in the General Council of Medical Education and Registration. In 1883 he gave the Bradshaw lecture, taking as his subject ‘Nerve Stretching,’ which was published in 1887. In 1885 he delivered the Hunterian oration, which was issued in that year (London, 8vo), and in 1889 the Morton lecture on cancer, which was printed for private circulation. On 11 June 1857 Marshall was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1882–3 he acted as president of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, and in 1887 he replaced Sir Henry Acland as president of the General Medical Council. At the tercentenary of the university of Edinburgh he was created LL.D. as the official representative on that occasion of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. In 1887 he was made an honorary master in surgery of the Royal University of Ireland, and in 1890 he received the degree of doctor of medicine, conferred upon him honoris causâ by Trinity College, Dublin.
Marshall's fame rests greatly upon the ability with which he taught anatomy in its relation to art. In 1853 he gave his first course of lectures on anatomy to the art students at Marlborough House, a course which he repeated when the art schools were removed to South Kensington. On 16 May 1873 he was appointed professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy. This office he held till his death, and his great facility in drawing on the blackboard gave additional attractions to his lectures. He died after a short illness on New-year's day 1891, at the age of seventy-two, leaving a widow, one son, and two daughters. He was buried at Ely.
As a surgeon, the name of John Marshall is connected with the introduction of the galvano-cautery and with the operation of the excision of varicose veins, a procedure which was at first assailed with much virulence, but which has long since obtained a recognised position as a legitimate method of cure. His knowledge of physiology is attested by his work entitled ' The Outlines of Physiology, Human and Comparative,' 1867, 3 vols. 12mo, and by his four years' tenure of the Fullerian chair of physiology at the Royal Institution. His power of original observation is shown by his paper in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1850, 'On the Development of the Great Veins,' which has rendered his name familiar to every student of medicine, and by a second paper, 'On the Brain of a Bush woman,' published in 1864. He fully grasped the requirements of medical students ; the details of their education at the present time were to a large extent formulated by him, and he took a deep interest in the scheme of establishing a teaching university in London.
Marshall was one of the first to show that cholera might be spread by means of drinking water, and his report upon the outbreak of cholera in Broad Street, St. James's, London, in 1854, is still important and interesting. He invented the system of circular wards for hospitals, and published a pamphlet on the subject in 1879.
His chief works, apart from those already noticed, were : 1. 'A Description of the Human Body, its Structure and Functions,' London, 1860, 4to, with folio plates; 4th edit. 1883. 2. 'Anatomy for Artists,' London, 1878, royal 8vo ; 2nd edit. 1883 ; 3rd edit. 1890. 3. 'A Rule of Proportion for the Human Figure,' 1878, fol. 4. 'A Series of Life-size Anatomical Diagrams,' seven sheets. 5. 'Physiological Diagrams,' life size, eleven sheets. He left two completed papers : 'On the Relations between the Weight of the Brain and its Parts, and the Stature and Mass of the Body,' and on 'The Brain of the late George Grote,' both of which were published in 1892, in the 'Journal of Anatomy and Physiology.'
A bust by Thomas Thornycroft, dated 1852, is in the possession of Mrs. Marshall. Another by Mr. Thomas Brock, R.A., dated 1887, will shortly be placed in University College; and a replica has been purchased by the Royal College of Surgeons of England. A portrait, in the oil-painting of the president and council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, executed in 1885 by Mr. H. Jamyn Brooks, hangs in the hall of the college in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
[Information kindly supplied by Mrs. Mar shall, Mr. Cadge, and Mr. J. Erie Erichsen, F.R.S. ; Obituary Notices in Proceedings of Royal Society; Transactions of Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, Ixxiv. 16; Lancet, 1891, i. 117; British Medical Journal, 1891, i. 91.]