A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Allbutt, Sir Thomas Clifford
Allbutt, Sir Thomas Clifford, K.C.B., M.A., M.D., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S., physician. B. July 20, 1836. Ed, St. Peter's, York, and Cambridge University (Caius), where he took first class in the Natural Science Tripos. Allbutt was physician to various institutions until 1889, when he was appointed Commissioner in Lunacy. In 1892 he resigned this position and became Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge. He was Vice-President of the Royal Society 1914-16. He has sat on many Royal Commissions, has written many volumes on medicine, and has been Lane Lecturer, Goulstonian Lecturer, and Harveian Orator. He invented the Short Clinical Thermometer. In his genial and learned Harveian Oration (Science and Medieval Thought, 1901) Sir Thomas expresses his mild but thorough dissent from the creeds. "I wonder," he says, "if we are glad that the riddle of the origin and issues of being, which tormented their eager hearts, is not solved, but proved insoluble."