John Hulke

John Whitaker Hulke (1830 to 1895) was a British surgeon who made his particular mark in ophthalmology while also earning a European reputation as a geologist and fossil collector. Born in Deal, Kent, the son of a general practitioner, he qualified MRCS in 1852, served as an assistant surgeon during the Crimean War, and was elected FRCS in 1857. He was surgeon at the Royal Ophthalmic Hospital, Moorfields, from 1868 to 1890, and later surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital, where much of his important surgical work was done. In 1861 he first described oculodermal melanosis, later known as the nevus of Ota. He was president of the Pathological Society of London in 1883 and president of the Royal College of Surgeons from 1893 until his death, and he gave the 1891 Bradshaw Lecture on spinal fractures and dislocations.