Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Smyly, Philip Crampton
SMYLY, Sir PHILIP CRAMPTON (1838–1904), surgeon and laryngologist, born at 8 Ely Place, Dublin, on 17 June 1838, was eldest son in a family of four sons and eight daughters of Josiah Smyly, M.D. (d. 1864), a Dublin surgeon of good position, by his wife Ellen (d. 1901), daughter of Matthew Franks, of Jerpoint Hill, Thomastown, co. Kilkenny. His mother devoted herself to philanthropic work in Dublin, founding and maintaining many schools for poor children. His grandfather, John Smyly, K.C., a member of the Irish bar, came of a family settled in the north of Ireland from the sixteenth century. Sir Philip Crampton [q. v.] was his granduncle. A younger brother. Sir William Josiah Smyly, is an obstetrician and gynæcologist of distinction in Dublin. A sister, Louisa Katharine, married Robert Stewart, a missionary to Hwa-Sang, China, where they were both murdered in 1892.
Philip after education at home was apprenticed at fifteen to his grand-uncle Sir Philip Crampton, and after the latter's death in 1858 to William Henry Porter [q. v.]. During his apprenticeship he attended lectures in the schools of Trinity College, Dublin, and of the Royal College of Surgeons, and at the Meath Hospital. In 1854 he entered Trinity College, and in 1859 he graduated B.A., winning a junior moderatorship and silver medal in experimental and natural science. Next year he proceeded M.B., and obtained the licence of the Irish College of Physicians. After some months' study in Berlin he returned home, and in 1863 he proceeded M.D., and was admitted fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. In 1861 he succeeded Porter, his former master, as surgeon to the Meath Hospital, his father being one of his colleagues. This post he retained till his death. He was a member of the viceregal staff during successive vice-royalties from 1869 to 1892. He was president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1878-9, and from 1898 to 1900 he represented that college on the General Medical Council. In 1895 he was appointed surgeon-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria in Ireland, and in 1901, on her death, honorary surgeon to King Edward. He was president of the Laryngological Association of Great Britain in 1889, of the Irish Medical Association in 1900, and of the Irish Medical Schools and Graduates' Association in 1902. He was consulting surgeon to the Hospital for Diseases of the Throat and Ear, the Children's Hospital, Harcourt Street, and the Rotunda Hospital, all in Dublin.
Smyly, though he always practised general surgery, was specially interested in laryngology, a field almost untouched in his younger days. His example familiarised the profession in Ireland with the use of the laryngoscope, which he introduced to Ireland in 1860. He also took special interest in abdominal and urethral surgery. He published little except occasional lectures to his pupils, and notes read before surgical societies. His observations on the use of tobacco juice as an antidote in strychnin poisoning are of interest, and he was one of the first to make practical application of Professor Haughton's study of the chemistry of strychnin and nicotin (Dublin Journal of Medical Science, vol. 34). Smyly enjoyed a large practice for many years and was knighted in 1892. Of courteous manners and striking appearance, he was generous in charitable gifts. He devoted his leisure to music, and was no mean violinist, At the time of his death he was president of the Hibernian Catch Club. He obtained high rank in freemasonry. He died suddenly from cerebral hæmorrhage on 8 April 1904, at 4 Merrion Square, Dublin, and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin. He married on 1 Feb. 1864 Selina Maria, sixth daughter of John Span Plunket, third Baron Plunket, sister of William Conyngham, fourth baron, archbishop of Dublin, and of David, first Baron Rathmore; by her he had three sons and six daughters. His eldest son, Sir Philip Crampton (knighted in 1905), became chief justice of Sierra Leone, and his second son, Gilbert Josiah, is professor of Latin in Trinity College, Dublin.
A portrait painted by Sir T. Jones, P.R.H.A., was presented to his wife by Smyly's brother freemasons in 1876; it is in her possession at 4 Merrion Square, Dublin.
[Brit. Med. Journal, 16 April 1904; Cameron's History of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland; Ormsby's Medical History of the Meath Hospital; Dublin Univ. Calendars; private information.]