Surgeon-Major T. R. Lewis

Abstract

DR. TIMOTHY LEWIS, Surgeon-Major Army Medical Staff and Assistant Professor of Pathology in the Netley Army Medical College, whose death, which took place on May 7, we announced last week, was a native of South Wales, and received his medical education at University College, London, and graduated as M.B. at Burlington Gardens. He was selected about twenty years ago, together with Dr. Cunningham, to proceed to India in order to undertake, under the auspices of the Indian Government, a prolonged study of the causation of cholera, especially in regard to its reputed relation to parasitic organisms. At that time little was known or thought about Bacteria, and the public mind had been aroused by Hallier's (now long-exploded) theory of a rice-fungus as the cause of cholera, just as more recently it has responded to Dr. Koch's invitation to believe in the comma-bacillus. Dr. Lewis and his companion were authorised to visit Prof. Hallier at Jena and Prof, de Bary (in those days not attached to French Strasburg !) for the purpose of acquainting themselves with methods of mycetological research before proceeding to India. A few weeks was all the time allowed them for this visit, and consequently they took little to India excepting their own conscientious habits of work and that modicum of knowledge of microscopic technique which was considered sufficient for the highest medical qualification in England in those days. Nevertheless these observers made most valuable and minute researches on the microscopic organisms present in the dejecta of cholera-patients, which were published by the Government of India. Dr. Lewis extended his researches into the general question of the presence of microscopic organisms in the blood and tissues of man in health and disease, and was led to some very interesting discoveries. His results were published from time to time by the Government of India, and were re-published as they appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science.