John Eric Erichsen

Sir John Eric Erichsen, 1st Baronet (1818 to 1896) was a Danish-born British surgeon. Born in Copenhagen into a well-known Danish banking family, he studied medicine at University College London under Robert Liston, saw a colotomy performed in Paris, and began as a house surgeon and a lecturer in anatomy and physiology at University College Hospital. He won the Royal Humane Society's Fothergillian gold medal in 1845 for an essay on asphyxia, became assistant surgeon in 1848 and full surgeon and professor of surgery in 1850, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1876. His textbook The Science and Art of Surgery (1853) went through many editions, later ones adding Joseph Lister's antiseptic methods and germ theory. He was surgeon-extraordinary to Queen Victoria and a recognized authority on concussion of the spine, often called to give evidence on so-called railway spine. A famous quotation about surgery reaching its limits is often wrongly credited to him. He died at Folkestone in 1896.