Item 171 - Letter to Arthur Keith, April 15, 1919

Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt was born on July 20, 1836, in Dewsbury, England.

He was an English physician, physicist, and inventor of clinical thermometer. He was educated at St. Peter's School, York and Caius College, Cambridge (B.A., 1859, M.Sc., 1860). He studied medicine at St. George's Hospital, London and received the Cambridge MB degree in 1861. After serving as one of the Commissioners for Lunacy in England and Wales from 1889, Allbutt became Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Cambridge in 1892. In 1870, Allbutt published “Medical Thermometry,” an article outlining the history of thermometry and describing his invention: a clinical thermometer approximately 6 inches long that a physician could carry in a pocket. His version of the thermometer, devised in 1867, was quickly adopted instead of the previous model, which was one foot long, and patients were required to hold it for about twenty minutes. In 1880, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was the author of the book, “On the Use of the Ophthalmoscope in Diseases of the Nervous System and of the Kidneys” (1871). He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1907. He supported Sir William Osler in founding of the History of Medicine Society at the Royal Society of Medicine in 1912. Allbutt became President of the British Medical Association and a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1920. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1922.

In 1869, he married Susan England. He died on February 22, 1925, in Cambridge, England.