William Miller Ord

William Miller Ord (1834 to 1902) was a British medical scientist who spent fifty years at St Thomas' Hospital in London, born on 23 September 1834. He was the son of George Ord, a surgeon who practised in Brixton, and received his medical education at St Thomas' Hospital, which he entered in 1852, and at London University. He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1855, a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1869 and a fellow in 1875. At St Thomas' he was in turn surgical registrar, house surgeon, lecturer in comparative anatomy, lecturer in physiology and eventually physician, and he was elected Dean of the Medical School. In 1879 he described the condition now called Ord's thyroiditis. His 1878 paper proposed the term myxoedema for the cretinoid condition seen in middle-aged women, and he was president of the Medical Society of London in 1885. He died on 14 May 1902 at The Hall in Salisbury, the home of his son.