Victor Negus

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. Three more years of study led to the attainment in 1912 of the MRCS and LRCP (Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons and Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, known as the 'conjoint diploma'), marking his formal qualification to practice medicine. In the final year of these studies, Negus was an usher at the funeral service for Lord Lister at Westminster Abbey. Another connection with Lister's generation came when Negus worked as surgical dresser and house surgeon under Sir William Watson Cheyne, who had himself been house surgeon to Lister. The postgraduate stages of Negus's training involved specialisation in diseases of the ear, nose and throat, a direction influenced and guided by the otorhinolaryngologist St Clair Thomson (1857–1943). In the years following his qualification in 1912, Negus worked at King's College Hospital, and had started further clinical training at the Hospital for Diseases of the Throat in Golden Square, Soho, but this was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. Negus served in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) with the British Expeditionary Force for the first 18 months of the war. He initially deployed with the 1st General Hospital, then saw action in the trenches on the front line with a machine-gun battalion at the First Battle of Ypres. The effects of explosives during this period left him with tinnitus. This was followed by a period serving on hospital barges. In 1916, Negus, still with the RAMC, was posted to the 3rd (Lahore) Division (part of the British Indian Army) and took part in the Mesopotamia Campaign. As one of those who had deployed to the Western Front in the opening months of the war, he was later awarded the Mons Star. His service in the RAMC ended in 1919. ==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. While engaged in this research, Negus continued his work at King's College Hospital, being appointed junior surgeon in 1924. Negus retired from clinical and teaching work in 1952 at the age of 65. ==Comparative anatomy==

In parallel with his career as a throat surgeon at a teaching hospital, Negus become a leading expert on the comparative anatomy of first the larynx and then the nose and the paranasal sinuses. This strand of his professional life started with the research he carried out in his thirties in the 1920s that eventually led to his degree of Master of Surgery (MS), awarded by the University of London. In addition to this, Negus gave the Arris and Gale Lecture on 28 April 1924 at the Royal College of Surgeons, with his talk titled "On the Mechanism of the Larynx". Further recognition of his work came when Negus was made Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1925, The following year Negus published his observations and conclusions in The Mechanism of the Larynx (1929), These earlier works were followed after the Second World War by the publication of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Larynx (1949). It was in this post-war period that Negus increasingly studied the function of the nose, both as the organ for the sense of smell (olfaction) and the role of the nose in respiration. This was prompted by wartime damage in 1941 to the Royal College of Surgeons' Hunterian Museum, which included the loss of parts of the Onodi Collection. This collection had contained specimens of the accessory sinuses (paranasal sinuses) prepared by the Hungarian laryngologist Adolf Onodi (1857–1919) and demonstrated by him in 1900. Negus undertook to replace the destroyed and damaged specimens and to extend the collection with animal specimens. This work was covered in Negus's Hunterian Lecture, delivered on 20 May 1954 at the Royal College of Surgeons under the title "Introduction to the Comparative Anatomy of the Nose and Paranasal Sinuses". This was followed four years later by the publication of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Nose and Paranasal Sinuses (1958). This was presented the following year when Negus delivered the Lister Oration on 5 April 1955 at the Royal College of Surgeons. The oration was titled "The Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Respiratory Tract in Relation to Clinical Problems". Ten years later, towards the end of his life, Negus published The Biology of Respiration (1965). Writing further on the subject in 1995, Harrison states that Negus's "pioneer research into the mechanism of the animal larynx [...] established him as a unique comparative anatomist." Harrison quotes from the Scottish anatomist Sir Arthur Keith's preface to The Mechanism of the Larynx. In this preface, Negus's 1929 work is described as showing "the same patient power of assembling observation after observation as Darwin had and some of the hot pursuit of function as urged by Hunter". ==Societies and administration==

, London 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. 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. Bateman opined in his obituary of Negus that it seemed unlikely that any other British ENT surgeon "has been honoured by so many societies". Following his retirement, Negus continued his involvement with the Royal College of Surgeons, becoming a trustee (and later chairman of the trustees) of the Hunterian Collection, the same collection that included the specimens that had underpinned his research some thirty years earlier. He also published books on the history of the college and its collections: The History of the Trustees of the Hunterian Collection (1965); and The Artistic Possessions at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (1968). ==Honours, awards and legacy==

In his later years, Negus received many awards and honours. In 1945, he was made a Fellow of King's College, London. 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." 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: ==Notes==