George James Guthrie

George James Guthrie (1785 to 1856) was an English surgeon, born in London of Scottish parents, who joined the Royal College of Surgeons as a member in 1801. He served as an army surgeon in the Peninsular campaign, where his work won the praise of the Duke of Wellington, and from 1816 he gave lectures on surgery to army and navy officers for nearly thirty years. He sat on the council of the Royal College of Surgeons from 1824 and was its president three times. His principal books deal with gunshot wounds and amputation (1814), the operative surgery of the eye (1823), the urinary and sexual organs, and the surgery of the war in Portugal, Spain, France and the Netherlands. The sphincter muscle of the membranous urethra, once known as Guthrie's muscle, carries his name in older anatomical dictionaries.