Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Wilks, Samuel
WILKS, Sir SAMUEL, baronet (1824–1911), physician, born at Camberwell, on 2 June 1824, was second son of Joseph Barber Wilks, treasurer at the East India House, by his wife Susannah Edwards, daughter of William Bennett of Southborough, Kent. He went to Aldenham grammar school in 1836, and spent three years there, followed by a year at University College school in London. He was then apprenticed to Richard Prior, a general practitioner in Newington, and in 1842 entered as a student at Guy's Hospital; in 1847 he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. His natural turn was for medicine, and he graduated M.B. at the University of London in 1848 and M.D. in 1850, and was admitted a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1851 and elected a fellow of that college in 1856, in which year he was appointed assistant physician to Guy's Hospital. He became physician in 1866, and held office till 1885. He was also successively curator of the museum, lecturer on pathology, and lecturer on medicine there, and attained a great reputation by his researches and teaching in the post mortem room and the wards. He published in 1859 ‘Lectures on Pathological Anatomy,’ one of the most important works on the anatomy of disease since the appearance of the ‘Morbid Anatomy’ of Dr. Matthew Baillie [q. v.] in 1795. A second edition in which Dr. Walter Moxon [q. v.] took part appeared in 1875, and a third thoroughly revised by Wilks in 1887. The fame of Guy's Hospital from 1836 to the present day has been largely increased by its annual volumes of ‘Reports,’ and Wilks from 1854 to 1865 became editor and contributed numerous important papers to them. In 1874 he published ‘Lectures on the Specific Fevers and on Diseases of the Chest,’ and in 1878 ‘Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System,’ of which a second edition appeared in 1883. He was always anxious to increase the fame of other discoverers, and this quality appears in his edition of the works of Thomas Addison [q. v.], published in 1868, and in his insistence on the use of the term ‘Hodgkin's disease’ for a glandular enlargement to the knowledge of which he himself contributed, though its original description was found in the observations of Thomas Hodgkin [q. v.], a fact first demonstrated by Wilks. He was an accurate student of the history of medicine, and in 1892 wrote with G. T. Bettany ‘A Biographical History of Guy's Hospital.’ In this, as in his obituary notices of deceased fellows at the College of Physicians, Wilks, while never unkind, showed a rigid respect for truth, resembling that of Johnson's ‘Life of Savage,’ and never gave way to the adulatory style of biography applied equally to the just and the unjust. Wilks's last work was a memoir on the new discoveries or new observations made during the time he was a teacher at Guy's Hospital, published in 1911. It contains inter alia a bibliography of his writings.
He delivered the Harveian oration at the College of Physicians on 29 June 1879, and was elected president from 1896 to 1899. In 1897 he was created a baronet and appointed physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria. He was president of the Pathological Society 1881–3, was a member of the senate of the University of London in 1885, and sat on the general medical council as representative of that university from 29 Oct. 1887 to 22 April 1896.
He first lived at 11 St. Thomas's Street, near Guy's Hospital, and later in Grosvenor Street till 1901, when he retired to Hampstead. Severe illnesses in 1904 and 1907 and two consequent operations did not cloud his understanding, and he continued to take active interest in science and literature to the end of his life. He died at Hampstead on 8 Nov. 1911, and his body, after cremation, was buried there. He married on 25 July 1854 Elizabeth Ann, daughter of Henry Mockett, of Seaford, Sussex, widow of Richard Prior, M.R.C.S., of Newington, Surrey; she predeceased Wilks without issue.
Wilks was profoundly respected by the physicians of his time. His pupils were struck by the vast amount of information on morbid anatomy and clinical medicine which he could at any moment pour out. His conversation was delightful and filled with acute remarks on men as well as with learning of many kinds. His portrait by Percy Ryland hangs in the dining-room of the Royal College of Physicians.
[Works; The Times, 9 Nov. 1911; obituary notice in British Medical Journal, 18 Nov. 1911, with additional notes by his friends Dr. Frederick Taylor, Sir George Savage, Sir Bryan Donkin, and Dr. Jessop of Hampstead; personal knowledge.]