William Stokes (physician)

Biography

• Born in Dublin on 1 October 1804. Father of of Sir William Stokes (1838-1900)
• 1825 – MD, University of Edinburgh Medical School
• 1845 – Appointed by the Queen as Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Dublin
• 1861 – Physician to the Queen in Ireland
• 1867 – President of the British Medical Association
• 1874 – President of the Irish Academy
• 1875 – On commendation by the English ambassador, decorated by Emperor Wilhelm I with the Prussian Order Pour le Mérite for contributions to medicine
• Died 10 January 1878 in Howth, Ireland

Key Medical Attributes

• 1825 – Produced one of the first treatises on the use of the stethoscope in clinical medicine 
• 1846 – Re-described the pattern of breathing previously described by John Cheyne (1818) now known as Cheyne-Stokes breathing

Medical Eponyms

• Cheyne–Stokes respiration (1818, 1854)
• Stokes-Adams syndrome (1827, 1846)

Quotations

• “My father left me but one legacy, the blessed gift of rising early” – Stokes often woke at four or five o’clock in the morning to write

Controversies

William Stokes recorded and published the autopsy of Abraham Colles (1773 – 1843) performed by Robert William Smith (of Smith fracture fame) as ‘Observations on the Case of the Late Abraham Colles‘. Colles requested that Smith be called upon to perform his own autopsy.

Note: William Stokes (physician)(1804–1878) – not to be confused with Sir William Stokes (surgeon) (1838-1900)…his son

Major Publications

• Stokes W. An introduction to the use of the stethoscope: with its application to the diagnosis in diseases of the thoracic viscera; including the pathology of these various affections. Dublin: Hodges and McArthur. 1825
• Graves R, Stokes W. Clinical reports, of the medical cases in the Meath Hospital and County of Dublin Infirmary. 1826-1827.
• Stokes W. A Treatise on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases of the Chest: Part I – Disease of the lung and windpipe. Dublin: Hodges and Smith. 1837
• Stokes W. Lectures on the theory and practice of physic. Volume I; Volume II. Philadelphia. 1840
• Stokes W. Researches on the state of the heart, and the use of wine in typhus fever. 1840
• Stokes W. Observations of some cases of permanently slow pulse. Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science. 1846;2(1):73–85. [Stokes-Adams syndrome]
• Stokes W. Fatty degeneration of the heart. In: The Diseases of the heart and the aorta. 1854:302-340 [Cheyne–Stokes respiration]
• Stokes W. The Diseases of the heart and the aorta. Lindsay and Blakiston. 1854
• Stokes W. Medicine in modern times. Macmillan. 1869
• Stokes W. Some requirements in clinical teaching in Dublin. Dublin. 1871
• Stokes W. State medicine: a discourse delivered before the University of Dublin. 1872
• Stokes W. Lectures on fever: Delivered in the Theatre of the Meath Hospital and County of Dublin Infirmary. Henry C. Lea. 1876

References

• Fletcher A, Moor D. The lives and works of John Cheyne (1777-1836) and William Stokes (1804-1878). J Intensive Care Soc. 2017 Nov;18(4):323-325. [PMC5661788]
• Stokes W. William Stokes, his life and work (1804-1878). London: Unwin. 1898