Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Mackenzie, Stephen
MACKENZIE, Sir STEPHEN (1844–1909), physician, born on 14 Oct. 1844 at Leytonstone, was seventh child of four sons and five daughters of Stephen Mackenzie, who in addition to his medical practice had a large establishment for the treatment of hysterical patients. His mother, Margaret Frances, was the daughter of Adam Harvey, a wine merchant of Lewes and Brighton. Sir Morell Mackenzie [q. v.], the laryngologist, was the eldest child. An uncle, Charles Mackenzie, known as Henry Compton [q. v.], was a Shakespearean actor. Mackenzie's father was killed in a carriage accident in 1851, and he left his family in somewhat straitened circumstances. Stephen, after education at Christ's Hospital (1853-9), began his medical career as apprentice to Dr. Benjamin Dulley of Wellingborough, whose daughter he afterwards married. He entered the medical college of the London Hospital in 1866, and became M.R.C.S. England in 1869. After holding a number of resident appointments at the London Hospital, he lived for a year at Aberdeen, and there graduated M.B. with highest honours in 1873 and M.D. in 1875. He became M.R.C.P. of London in 1874 and F.R.C.P. in 1879. After working at the Charité Hospital, Berlin, in 1873, he returned to the London Hospital, and was appointed in succession medical registrar (9 Dec. 1873), assistant physician (17 March 1874), physician to the skin department (7 Dec. 1875 to 19 Oct. 1903), physician (14 Sept. 1886), and consulting physician (6 Dec. 1905). In 1877 he was appointed lecturer on pathology jointly with H. G. Sutton, and in 1886 lecturer on medicine in the medical college.
Mackenzie was distinguished not only as a general physician but for special knowledge of skin diseases, to which he made many original contributions, and of ophthalmology, which by his teaching he did much to introduce into general medicine. He was physician (1884-1905) and consulting physician to the London Ophthalmic (Moorfields) Hospital, and wrote on changes in the retina in diseases of the kidneys. In 1891 he delivered the Lettsomian lectures before the Medical Society of London on anaemia. He also made some original observations on the distribution of the filarial parasites in the blood of man in relation to sleep and rest. He employed glycerinated calf lymph for vaccination, thus reviving the practice instituted by Dr. Cheyne in 1853. He was knighted in 1903, and soon afterwards resigned his hospital appointments owing to increasing asthma.
Mackenzie died on 3 Sept. 1909, and was buried at Dorking. He married in 1879 Helen, daughter of Dr. Benjamin Dulley of Wellingborough, and had one daughter and three sons. Mackenzie's portrait in oils, painted by Henry Gibbs in 1882, is in the possession of his widow at The Croft, Dorking.
Mackenzie wrote numerous articles in Quain's 'Dictionary of Medicine,' Allbutt's 'System of Medicine,' and other medical publications, but published no independent treatise.
[London Hosp. Gaz. 1909-10, xvi. 6 ; Brit. Med. Journal, 1909, ii. 732 ; private information.]