Armour, Donald John, 1869-1933

Donald John Armour was born on June 13, 1869, in Coburg, Ontario, the fifth son of the Hon. John Douglas Armour (1830-1903), Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario.

He was a Canadian surgeon. He was educated at Upper Canada College, University of Toronto (B.A., 1891) and University of London (M.B., 1894; L.R.C.P., 1896; M.R.C.P. and M.R.C.S., 1897). In 1900, he was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and devoted himself to surgery. In 1901, Armour was appointed an assistant demonstrator of anatomy at University College, London. He worked as a surgeon at the National Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System in Queen Square, Bloomsbury. In 1903, he was appointed assistant surgeon at the West London Hospital and surgeon in 1912. He also served as Dean of the West London Postgraduate School of Medicine. He was a surgeon at the Italian Hospital, the Blackheath and Charlton Hospital and the Acton Hospital. In 1906, he won the Jacksonian prize with an essay on “The diagnosis and treatment of those diseases and morbid growths of the vertebral column, spinal cord, and canal, which are amenable to surgical operations.” In 1908, he was a Hunterian Professor of Surgery and Pathology. At the Medical Society of London, Armour was a Lettsomian lecturer in 1927, when he lectured on the modern surgery dealing with the spinal canal and its membranes. He was also president of the West London Medico-chirurgical Society in 1928, the neurological section of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1928-29, and the Association of British Neurological Surgeons in 1930-32. He was an active member of the British Medical Association. When war began in 1914, he worked as a surgical specialist to several military hospitals with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He also worked at the Canadian hospital supported by the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire. For these services, he was created Companion of St. Michael and St. George (C.M.G.) in 1918.

In 1901, he married Maria Louise Clark Mitchell. He died suddenly on October 23, 1933, in London, England.