Thomas Hodgkin - Medical Training and Travel

Medical Training and Travel

In September 1819 Hodgkin was admitted to St. Thomas's and Guy's Medical School. He "walked the wards" for a year on the rounds of physicians and surgeons, and attended lectures, in particular those by Astley Cooper. He then studied at the University of Edinburgh, where the lecturers who impressed him included Andrew Duncan, the younger, and Robert Jameson in natural history. His first published paper, on the spleen, came from Duncan's course, and drew on the veterinary writings of his friend Bracy Clark.

In 1821, Hodgkin went to France, where he learned to work with the stethoscope, a recent invention of René Laënnec. He also took account of the exacting statistical and clinical approach of Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis. He associated there with British expatriates including Robert Knox and Helen Maria Williams. In 1823, he qualified for his M.D. at Edinburgh with a thesis on the physiological mechanisms of absorption in animals.

In Paris Hodgkin met Benjamin Thorpe, a banker for Rothschild's at the time, who was suffering from tuberculosis. Hodgkin became his physician for a while, and Thorpe was cured. This contact led to another appointment as physician to Abraham Montefiore, married to Henriette, daughter of Mayer Amschel Rothschild. Once graduated at Edinburgh, Hodgkin joined the couple for travel in Italy. Abraham was seriously ill with tuberculosis (he died in 1824) and the position proved unsatisfactory for both sides, with Hodgkin dismissed. But the relationship he built up with Moses Montefiore, Abraham's brother, proved a lifelong friendship.

Staying in Paris for an extended period from September 1824 to June 1825, Hodgkin made significant medical contacts. The Edwards brothers, William-Frédéric Edwards and Henri Milne Edwards, were both physiologists with distinctive theories, and Hodgkin looked over their work in the next few years. Achille-Louis Foville was a neurologist, around whom Hodgkin tried unsuccessfully, from 1838, to set up a southern version of the York Retreat.