Thomas Cuming

Biography

• Born on March 19, 1798, Armagh, Northern Ireland
• 1819 – Graduated with M.D. from the University of Edinburgh
• 1820 – Physician to the Dublin General Dispensary
• 1826-29 – Physician to the Wellesley Fever Hospital in Dublin; assistant physician to the Institution for Diseases of Children, Pitt Street; and lecturer at the Richmond School of Medicine
• 1829 – Returned to Armagh to practice medicine, where he became renowned through his contributions to an epidemic of fever and cholera.
• 1854 – Conferred M.D. from the University of Dublin
• 1854 – Fellow of the King and Queen’s College of Physicians of Ireland two years before Corrigan, who had previously been blackballed for the Fellowship in 1847.
• Died on September 4, 1887 in Armagh, Northern Ireland

Medical Eponyms

Cuming sign (1822)

Not a sign, but an early and thorough description of a single case of aortic insufficiency with post-mortem examination from 1820. Cuming published this case of a 38 year old man with his findings in a paper titled ‘A case of diseased heart’ (1822) in the Dublin Hospital Reports.

During and in the intervals of the paroxysms he had constant pulsation of the heart and large arteries; and the pulsations were so strong as to be visible from a considerable distance…The pulse at the wrist was regular, full, hard and vibrating

Cuming 1822: 320

At post mortem performed by Dr Charles Johnson, and in the presence of Cuming

The great increase of size was in the left ventricle, whose cavity was so much enlarged, as to admit of the hand being turned round in it with facility. The parietes of the left ventricle were thinner than natural…The valves of the aorta presented a shrivelled appearance; their margins were irregular, thickened, and of a cartilaginous consistence.

Cuming 1822: 327

Cuming explained his pathologic findings by relating the valve disease to its effects on left ventricular function.

The state of the aortic valves seems sufficient to account for the dilatation of the ventricle…they were consequently when-applied to one another incapable of closing up entirely the ventriculo- aortic aperture. During each diastole of the ventricle, therefore, a quantity of blood flowed back through this aperture from the artery which meeting the stream of blood flowing at the same time from the auricle, occasioned a violent and supernatural effort in the ventricle to empty itself of its contents

Cuming 1822: 329

Major Publications

• Cuming T. A Case of Diseased Heart, with Observations. Dublin Hospital Reports. 1822; 3: 319–334.
• Cuming T. Observations on an affection of the mouth in children. Dublin Hospital Reports. 1827; 4: 330–348.
• Cuming T. Observations on the Peripneumonia of Children. Dublin Transactions. 1828; 5.

References

Biography

• Obituary: Thomas Cuming MD, FKQCPI. Lancet 1887; 130(3341): 548
• Obituary: Thomas Cuming. BMJ 1887; 2: 653

Eponyms

• Bedford DE. An early account of aortic incompetence by Thomas Cuming (1798–1887). Med Hist. 1967 Oct; 11(4): 398–401
• Kligfield P. An annotation on the pulse in aortic regurgitation: Thomas Cuming, 1822. Am J Cardiol. 1979 Aug;44(2):370-1.
• Zhang G. Eponyms in Aortic Regurgitation. LITFL 2019