Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Corfield, William Henry
CORFIELD, WILLIAM HENRY (1843–1903), professor of hygiene and public health, born on 14 Dec. 1843 at Shrewsbury, was eldest son of Thomas Corfield, a chemist of that town, by his wife Jane Brown, of a Gloucestershire family. Educated at Cheltenham grammar school, he gained a demyship in natural science at Magdalen College, Oxford, matriculating on 12 Oct. 1861, and gaining a first class in mathematical moderations in 1863. He was then selected by Prof. C. G. B. Daubeny [q. v.] to accompany him to Auvergne, where he investigated the volcanic appearances in the Montbrison district. Returning to Oxford, he gained a first class in the final school of mathematics and physics in Michaelmas term 1864, and graduated B.A. From 1865 to 1875 he held, after open competition, the Sheppard medical fellowship at Pembroke College. In Michaelmas term 1865 he won a first class in the natural science school, in which he acted as examiner during 1873–4. He entered University College, London, as a medical student in 1865, in 1866 won the Burdett-Coutts scholarship at Oxford for geology, and next year was elected Radcliffe travelling fellow.
Influenced by Sir Henry W. Acland [q. v. Suppl. I] and by George Rolleston [q. v.], Corfield had by this time directed his attention more particularly to hygiene and sanitary science. A portion of his foreign travel was spent in Paris, where he attended Bouchardat's lectures and studied hygiene under Berthelot at the Collège de France. He proceeded afterwards to Lyons, worked at clinical medicine and surgery, and made a special study of the remains of the remarkable aqueducts of ancient Lugdunum. He also visited some of the medical schools in Italy and Sicily. He graduated M.B. at Oxford in 1868, and M.D. in 1872. In 1869 he was admitted M.R.C.P. London, and in 1875 he was elected F.R.C.P. He became a fellow of the Institute of Chemistry in 1877.
Meanwhile in 1869 Corfield was appointed professor of hygiene and public health at University College, London, and in 1875 he opened the first laboratory in London for the practical teaching of hygiene. In 1876 Corfield actively helped to found a museum of practical hygiene in memory of E. A. Parkes [q. v.], which was placed first at University College, afterwards at Margaret Street, Cavendish Square, and since 1909 at Buckingham Palace Road, Westminster, being now maintained by the Royal Sanitary Institute. Medical officer of health for Islington (1871–2), and for St. George's, Hanover Square (1872–1900), Corfield was at one time president of the Society of Medical Officers of Health.
A member of the committee appointed in 1869 by the British Association to inquire into the treatment and utilisation of sewage, Corfield worked as reporter to the committee until 1875, and he became an ardent advocate of land filtration and sewage farms. He delivered at the Royal Society of Arts in 1879 the Cantor lectures on ‘Dwelling houses, their sanitary construction and arrangements’; in 1893 the Harveian lecture before the Harveian Society of London, on ‘Disease and defective house sanitation,’ and in 1902 the Milroy lectures at the Royal College of Physicians of London, ‘On the ætiology of typhoid fever and its prevention’ (1902).
Corfield shares with Rogers Field the honour of being a pioneer in house sanitation and of being the first to enunciate the true principles of a healthy home. Public attention was called to the topic in 1871 by the attack of enteric contracted by the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII) at Londesborough Lodge, Scarborough. Corfield was called upon to make a careful inspection of Lord Londesborough's house. In a letter to ‘The Times’ on 22 Jan. 1872 he pointed out that the disease had not been conveyed by sewer air as had been suggested. For the next thirty years Corfield enjoyed a large consulting practice throughout England in connection with the sanitation of public and private buildings. In 1899 he was the first holder of the newly established office of consulting sanitary adviser to the office of works.
Corfield acted conjointly with Dr. John Netten Radcliffe [q. v.] as secretary of the Epidemiological Society (1870–2), and was president (1902–3). President of the public health section of the British Medical Association held at Bristol in 1894, and of a section of the sanitary congress of the Sanitary Institute held at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1896, Corfield originated the successful International Congress of Hygiene held in London in 1891. He represented the office of works at the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, of which he was honorary president, at Paris in 1900; and presided at the conference held by the Sanitary Institute at Paris in August 1900 under the auspices of the Société Française d'Hygiène.
Corfield died at Marstrand in Sweden, on a visit for his health, on 26 Aug. 1903. He married in 1876 Emily Madelina, youngest daughter of John Pike, F.S.A., and left a family of six children, two of whom are carrying on his work, one, Dr. Walter Francis Corfield, as medical officer of health for Colchester, the other, Frederick John Arthur Corfield, as a sanitary adviser.
Corfield belongs to the second generation of sanitary reformers in England. Entering professional life after a first-rate general education, he took up the subject of public health where it had been left by Chadwick, Simon, Buchanan, Netten Radcliffe, Thorne-Thorne and others, and carried it forward until it became a highly specialised science.
Corfield, who had wide interests outside his profession, was a collector of rare books and a connoisseur in binding. His library was especially rich in works on fishing, for he was an ardent angler. He was also a lover of prints, and made a fine collection of Bewick's woodcuts. For more than twenty years he was chairman of the committee of the Sunday Society, which has for its object the opening of museums, picture galleries, and public libraries on Sunday.
Corfield's chief works are: 1. ‘A Digest of Facts relating to the Treatment and Utilisation of Sewage,’ 1870; 3rd edit. 1887. 2. ‘Water and Water Supply,’ Part 1; and ‘Sewerage and Sewerage Utilisation,’ Part 2, New York, 1875. 3. ‘Dwelling Houses: their Sanitary Construction and Arrangements,’ 1880; 4th edit. 1898; translated into French from 2nd edit. by P. Jardet, Paris, 1889. 4. ‘Laws of Health,’ 1880; 9th edit. 1896. 5. ‘Disease and Defective House Sanitation,’ 1896; translated into French, Italian and Hungarian. 6. ‘Public Health Laboratory Work,’ 1884 (jointly with W. W. Cheyne and C. E. Cassal).
[Lancet, 1903, ii. 778 (with portrait); Brit. Med. Journal, 1903, ii. 627 (with portrait); Journal of the Sanitary Institute, 1903, vol. xxiv. part iii. p. 530 (with portrait); the Medico-Chirurgical Trans., 1904, lxxxvii. p. cxxxi; Trans. Epidemiological Society of London, New Series, xxii. 160; information from Mr. F. J. A. Corfield.]