Collection EN - Edward Nettleship collection

Extent: 1 box

Correspondence, pedigrees and notes relating to a study into colour blindness

Admin History: Edward Nettleship was born at Kettering, Northamptonshire, 3 Mar 1845, the fourth son of Henry John Nettleship, solicitor, and Isabella, daughter of the Rev James Hogg, Rector of Geddington and sometime Headmaster of Kettering Grammar School. Edward Nettleship was one of seven children, six of whom were boys. The only girl died in early infancy and the youngest boy died at the age of 15. Edward Nettleship was educated at Kettering Grammar School under Dr Tune, an enthusiast in natural history. His pupil developed similar tastes and it was decided that he should become a farmer. In 1861 he spent some months on a farm at Kimbolton and then went to the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester, of which he became a Member in 1863. He afterwards entered King's College, London, and the Royal Veterinary College, Camden Town, where he seems to have studied for the medical and veterinary professions simultaneously. He was admitted a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries and received the diploma of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 1867. He was appointed Professor of Veterinary Surgery at the Royal Agricultural College in succession to William Hunting, but held the post only for a year, after which he returned to London, entered the London Hospital, and acted first as dresser and afterwards as private assistant to Jonathan Hutchinson. Nettleship began to specialize in ophthalmic surgery in 1868, when he became a student at Moorfields Eye Hospital under Jonathan Hutchinson and was associated with Waren Tay. He was Curator of the Museum and Librarian of the Moorfields Hospital from 1871 to 1873 and introduced the glycerin-jelly method of preserving museum specimens. He married Elizabeth Endacott, daughter of Richard Whiteway, of Compton, Devonshire in 1869. In 1873 he was placed in charge of the Ophthalmic School at Bow which had been opened by the Local Government Board in a disused workhouse. He was asked by the Local Government Board to inspect and report upon the Metropolitan Poor Law Schools in reference to the prevalence of ophthalmia and the measures for dealing with it. His report published in 1874 led to some much-needed reforms. Nettleship's first appointment on the staff of a hospital was at the South London Ophthalmic (later the Royal Eye) Hospital. He resigned in 1878, when he was elected Ophthalmic Surgeon to St Thomas's Hospital, in place of R Liebreich, where he remained until 1895. In 1888 he became Dean of the Medical School, a post he held for three years. In 1882 he was elected Assistant Surgeon to the Moorfields Eye Hospital, the election being the last to be carried out by a personal canvass of the whole body of Governors; in 1887 he was promoted full Surgeon, and he remained on the active staff until 1898. Early in 1880 he was one of the promoters of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom and was elected the first Surgical Secretary, Sir William Bowman being President and Sir Stephen Mackenzie the Medical Secretary. In 1895, after serving as a Member of Council and a Vice-President, he was chosen President and filled the post with distinction for two years. He was also interested in the formation of the Section of Ophthalmology at the Royal Society of Medicine in 1912. He acted as one of the Secretaries of the Ophthalmological Section at the International Medical Congress held in London in 1881, and was a Vice-President of the Section when the Congress met again in London in 1913. Nettleship was President of the Ophthalmological Section of the British Medical Association at the Montreal Meeting in 1897. In 1909 he delivered the Bowman Lecture "Upon some Hereditary Diseases of the Eye", and in 1910 he was appointed a member of the Board of Trade Departmental Committee on Sight Tests for the Mercantile Marine, which issued its report in 1912. He was also a member of a special board which sat at South Kensington for the examination of candidates for the mercantile marine who appealed from the decision of the Board of Trade examiners in colour vision. Nettleship began to practise independently in 1875 and gave up practice in 1902, when he retired to Hindhead, first in furnished rooms in Grafton Street, then in Finsbury Pavement, where he shared a home with Waren Tay; next at Stepney where he took resident pupils from the London Hospital. He lived at 5 Wimpole Street whilst he practised, and in 1885 he bought land at Hindhead, where he built a house which was completed in 1887, moving in 1910 to a smaller house in the same neighbourhood. Retirement from practice merely meant change of work for Nettleship, and he really made his name and a new branch of ophthalmology during his residence at Hindhead between 1902 and 1913. He created a school of ophthalmological geneticists by his investigations on the influence of heredity in eye disease. He traced 1800 descendants of Jean Nougaret born in 1637 and afflicted with congenital night blindness. In the earlier half of the nineteenth century only 600 Nougarets had been traced. In conjunction with Karl Pearson and C H Usher he prepared an elaborate monograph upon "Albinism in Man". He was elected FRS in 1912 largely in recognition of this work. A fund was inaugurated on the occasion of his retirement from practice in 1901 to express the esteem and regard in which Nettleship was held, and was devoted to found a medal for the encouragement of scientific ophthalmic work. The Edward Nettleship Prize is awarded triennially by the Ophthalmological Society, and the first award was to Nettleship himself in 1909 in recognition of his researches upon heredity in diseases of the eye. He died 30 Oct 1913 at Longdown Hollow.