Golding Bird - Life and Career

Life and Career

Bird was born in Downham, Norfolk, England, on 9 December 1814. His father (also named Golding Bird) had been an officer in the Inland Revenue in Ireland, and his mother, Marrianne, was Irish. He was precocious and ambitious, but childhood rheumatic fever and endocarditis left him with poor posture and lifelong frail health. He received a classical education when he was sent with his brother Frederic to stay with a clergyman in Wallingford, where he developed a lifelong habit of self-study. From the age of 12, he was educated in London, at a private school that did not promote science and provided only a classical education. Bird, who seems to have been far ahead of his teachers in science, gave lectures in chemistry and botany to his fellow pupils. He had four younger siblings, of whom his brother Frederic also became a physician and published on botany.

In 1829, when he was 14, Bird left school to serve an apprenticeship with the apothecary William Pretty in Burton Crescent, London. He completed it in 1833 and was licensed to practise by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries at Apothecaries' Hall in 1836. He received this licence without examination because of the reputation he had gained as a student at Guy's, the London teaching hospital where he had become a medical student in 1832 while still working at his apprenticeship. At Guy's he was influenced by Thomas Addison, who recognised his talents early on. Bird was an ambitious and very capable student. Early in his career he became a Fellow of the Senior Physical Society, for which a thesis was required. He received prizes for medicine, obstetrics, and ophthalmic surgery at Guy's and the silver medal for botany at Apothecaries' Hall. Around 1839 to 1840, he worked on breast disease at Guy's as an assistant to Sir Astley Cooper.

Bird graduated from the University of St Andrews with an MD in 1838 and an MA in 1840 while continuing to work in London. St Andrews required no residence or examination for the MD. Bird obtained his degree by submitting testimonials from qualified colleagues, which was common practice at the time. Once qualified in 1838, at the age of 23, he entered general practice with a surgery at 44 Seymour Street, Euston Square, London, but was unsuccessful at first because of his youth. In the same year, however, he became physician to the Finsbury Dispensary, a post he held for five years. By 1842, he had an income of £1000 a year from his private practice. Adjusted for inflation, this amounts to a spending power of about £76,000 now. At the end of his career, his income was just under £6000. He became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1840, and a fellow in 1845.

Bird lectured on natural philosophy, medical botany and urinary pathology from 1836 to 1853 at Guy's. He lectured on materia medica at Guy's from 1843 to 1853 and at the Royal College of Physicians from 1847 to 1849. He also lectured at the Aldersgate School of Medicine. Throughout his career, he published extensively, not only on medical matters, but also on electrical science and chemistry.

Bird became the first head of the electricity and galvanism department at Guy's in 1836, under the supervision of Addison, since Bird did not graduate until 1838. In 1843, he was appointed assistant physician at Guy's, a position for which he had lobbied hard, and in October that year he was put in charge of the children's outpatients ward. Like his electrotherapy patients, the children were largely poor relief cases who could not afford to pay for medical treatment and were much used for the training of medical students. It was generally accepted at this time that poor relief cases could be used for experimental treatment, and their permission was not required. Bird published in the hospital journal a series of reports on childhood diseases, based on case studies from this work.

Marrying Mary Ann Brett in 1842, Bird moved from his family home at Wilmington Square, Clerkenwell, to 19 Myddleton Square. They had two daughters and three sons, the second of whom, Cuthbert Hilton Golding-Bird (1848–1939), became a notable surgeon.

Bird was a Fellow of the Linnaean Society (elected 1836), the Geological Society (elected 1836) and the Royal Society (elected 1846). He joined the Pathological Society of London (which eventually merged into the Royal Society of Medicine) when it was formed in 1846. He also belonged to the London Electrical Society founded by William Sturgeon and others. This body was very unlike the elite scholarly institutions; it was more like a craft guild with a penchant for spectacular demonstrations. Nevertheless, it had some notable members, and new machines and apparatus were regularly discussed and demonstrated. Bird was also a Freemason from 1841 and was the Worshipful Master of the St Paul's lodge in 1850. He left the Freemasons in 1853.

Bird was vain, with a tendency to self-promotion, and his driving ambition occasionally led him into conflict with others. He was involved in a number of very public disputes in contemporary medical journals, including the dispute with the Pulvermacher Company and a dispute over the development of the stethoscope. However, he was said to give his patients his undivided attention and a complete commitment to their welfare. He was a fine speaker, a good lecturer and an eloquent debater.

Diagnosed with heart disease by his brother in 1848 or 1849, Bird was forced to stop work. By 1850, however, he was again working as hard as ever and had extended his practice so much that he needed to move to a larger house in Russell Square. But in 1851, acute rheumatism led Bird to take an extended holiday with his wife in Tenby, where he pursued investigations in botany, marine fauna and cave life as pastimes. These long summer breaks were repeated in 1852 and 1853 at Torquay and Tenby. Even on holiday, his fame caused him to receive many requests for consultations. In 1853, he purchased an estate, St Cuthbert, for his retirement in Tunbridge Wells, but it needed some work, and he could not leave London until June 1854. Meanwhile, he continued to see patients, but only in his house, despite seriously deteriorating health. He died on 27 October 1854 at St Cuthbert from a urinary tract infection and suffering from kidney stones. His early death at 39 may have been due to a combination of lifelong frail health and overwork, which Bird himself knew to be destroying him. He is buried in Woodbury Park Cemetery, Tunbridge Wells.

After his death, Mary instituted the Golding Bird Gold Medal and Scholarship for sanitary science, later named the Golding Bird Gold Medal and Scholarship for bacteriology, which was awarded annually at Guy's teaching hospital. The prize was instituted in 1887 and was still being awarded in 1983, although it is no longer a current prize. From 1934 onwards, a Golding Bird Gold Medal and Scholarship was also awarded for obstetrics and gynaecology. Among the notable recipients of the medal were Nathaniel Ham (1896), Alfred Salter (1897), Russell Brock (1926), John Beale (1945), and D. Bernard Amos (circa 1947–1951).