Catalogue description Lewis, Timothy Richards (1841-1886)

Twelve scientific notebooks, 1869-1886, relating to Lewis' research work while in India and as Assistant Professor in Pathology at the Army Medical School, Netley including information on patient observations, dissections of parasites and drawings.

12 notebooks

Lewis

Timothy Richards

1841-1886

Surgeon and Pathologist

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Born 1841, Hafod, Wales, and brought up on the family farm in Pembrokeshire; apprenticed to a local apothecary; aged nineteen moved to London, worked at a chemist in Streatham and then as dispenser to the German Hospital; attended German lectures at University College London; moved to Aberdeen where he qualified in 1867; Army Medical School at Netley, Hampshire, 1868, where at the end of the four-month course passed out first on the list; posted to India in 1869, where he investigated cholera; while studying chyluria (the presence of lymphatic fluid in urine), he discovered minute worms in the urine of one particular patient - subsequently they were identified as Filariidae, but in the meantime the patient disappeared before Lewis could carry out any further investigations; in 1872 Lewis found similar worms in a blood sample and when this work was written up Lewis was amazed to discover the original patient setting up the type for its publication by the Government Printing Office in Calcutta. Later he found the mature worm but it had already been discovered independently of him by Joseph Bancroft in Australia. However he discovered and described the first trypanosome, which was named Trypanosoma lewisei after him, in the blood of a mammal; appointed, 1883, Assistant Professor of Pathology at Netley where he introduced practical bacteriology to the curriculum; died of pneumonia, 1886, allegedly as a consequence of a laboratory accident.