William Piers Ormerod

Ormerod was born in London, the fifth son of the antiquarian, George Ormerod (1785–1873), and his wife, Sarah, née Latham (1784–1860). He was sent to a private school at Laleham, Middlesex, together with his younger brother, Edward, and afterwards (in 1832) to Rugby School, where three of his elder brothers had been educated. In 1835, he went to St Bartholomew's Hospital, where, on the advice of his uncle, Peter Mere Latham, he was articled to Edward Stanley, and was helped by James Paget. He was a quiet and diligent student, and did well in examinations.

In 1840–41, Ormerod was house surgeon to William Lawrence, and in 1842 he gained the Jacksonian prize of the Royal College of Surgeons for his Essay on the comparative merits of mercury and iodine in the treatment of syphilis. In 1843, he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy, and in the following year he printed, for the use of the students of the hospital, a collection of Questions in Practical Anatomy (1844). He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1843, and afterwards a fellow (1845); he also belonged to the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society. His health began to fail from overwork, and in 1844 he left London and retired to his father's house at Sedbury Park. Here he arranged the surgical materials that he had collected in the hospital between 1835 and 1844. He published them in 1846, together with the substance of his 1842 Jacksonian prize essay, under the title Clinical Collections.

In the summer of 1846, Ormerod returned to work and went to Oxford. He was elected a surgeon to the Radcliffe Infirmary, and in 1848 he published an essay, On the Sanatory [sic] Condition of Oxford, based on the annual reports of the registrar-general for 1844–6; this paid special attention to the sanitary condition of the different places in which deaths from infectious diseases had occurred. But in December 1848, 'after a period of great hurry and anxiety', he suffered from epileptic fits and retired from practice altogether. He never married. He left Oxford in 1849, and in 1850 settled at Canterbury. He hoped to be strong enough to train as a missionary. However, his mind failed gradually, and he died at his home, 33 St Peter's, Westgate, Canterbury, having fractured the base of his skull from a fall during an epileptic seizure. He was buried in the churchyard of St Martin's Church, Canterbury.

Category: 1818 births Category: 1860 deaths Category: British anatomists Category: British surgeons Category: Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons Category: Old Rugbeians