Richard Quain - Career

Career

Quain received his early education at Cloyne, and was then apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary in Limerick. In 1837 he entered University College, London, where he graduated with high honors as M.B. in 1840, and as M.D. (gold medal) in 1842. Six years later he was chosen to be an assistant-physician to the Brompton Hospital for Diseases of the Chest. He retained his connection with that institution until his death, first as full physician (1855), and subsequently as consulting physician (1875).

In 1842 he received the gold medal for achievements in physiology and comparative anatomy, and later he became successively house surgeon and house physician at the University College Hospital and commenced practice in London, being in particular a protégé of professor Charles James Blasius Williams (1805–1889). He soon had a busy practice, numbering an important clientel, with contacts to the most highly recognized persons.

In 1848 Quain was appointed assistant physician at the Brompton Hospital Diseases of the Chest. He was raised to full physician in 1855 and was made consulting physician in 1875. He held the same rank at the Seamen's Hospital, Greenwich, and the Royal Hospital for Consumption in Ventnor.

In 1846 Quain became a member of the Royal College of Physicians and a fellow in 1851. In 1862 he served as a member of the council of this body, 1867 censor, 1877 senior censor. He was an early member of the Pathological Society of London in 1862, being elected its president in 1869. He was also a fellow and vice president of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society and the Medical Society of London, as well as President of the Harveian Society (1853) and fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1871. His address to the Society was On the mechanism by which the first sound of heart is produced.

He became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1851, and filled almost every post of honor it could offer, except the presidency, in the contest for which he was beaten by Sir Andrew Clark in 1888. In 1881 he was asked by Queen Victoria to attend prime minister Benjamin Disraeli during his last few days. He later, in 1890, became physician-extraordinary to the Queen, and was created a baronet of Harley Street in the County of London and of Carrigoon in Mallow in the County of Cork, in the following year.

He sat on the Royal Commission on Rinderpest (cattle plague) in 1865.

Quain was the author of several memoirs, dealing for the most part with disorders of the heart, but his name will be best remembered by the Dictionary of Medicine, the preparation of which occupied him from 1875 to 1882 (2nd edition, 1894; 3rd, 1902).