Frederick Salmon: founder of St. Mark's Hospital, London.

THE retirement of a senior surgeon from the staff of a hospital in which he has worked for many years is often an impressive occasion. How much more so when the surgeon is actually the founder of the hospital to which he has given the best years ofhis life! So it was one hundred years ago with Frederick Salmon, the Founder of St. Mark's Hospital, who retired from the active staff in the year 1859. To mark the occasion the Hospital Committee presented him with a portrait, painted by Francis Grant, R.A. (Fig. i), and this has hung in the boardroom of the hospital ever since. Facing this on the opposite wall of the hospital boardroom is a similar painting ofAlderman William Taylor Copeland, Lord Mayor ofLondon i835-6 (painted byJames Ward, R.A., in I854) (Fig. 2). William Taylor Copeland gave generous support to Salmon in the early years and established the tradition, continued ever since, whereby the reigning Lord Mayor of London pays an annual visit to the hospital to preside at the annual general meeting. Alderman W. T. Copeland was the first president of the hospital. Frederick Salmon is remembered partly for his books on stricture and other diseases of the rectum, partly for his outspoken criticisms of the constitution of the Royal College of Surgeons, but chiefly of course as the Founder of St. Mark's Hospital. He was born at Bath in I 796. After serving his medical apprenticeship in the west of England he came to London as a medical student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He obtained the L.S.A. in March I817 and M.R.C.S. in April i8i8 and was appointed as house surgeon at Barts. He began to specialize in surgery and was elected surgeon to the General Dispensary in Aldersgate Street in I827 but resigned in I832 owing to a dispute with the committee concerning appointments to the staff.