Henry Alexis Thomson

Henry Alexis Thomson (1863 to 1924) was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist and medical author who held the chair of Systematic Surgery at the University of Edinburgh from 1909 to 1923. Born in Edinburgh, he studied medicine at the university there and graduated in 1885, and in 1890 he won a gold medal for his thesis on tuberculosis of bones and joints. He worked at the Hospital for Sick Children and later the Deaconess Hospital, and he was joint editor of the Edinburgh Medical Journal from 1902 to 1909. His books include Steel Pegs in Surgery of the Bones and Joints, Manual of Surgery, written with Alexander Miles, and Operative Surgery. During the First World War he operated on wounded soldiers at the 2nd Scottish General Hospital and then on the western front with the 3rd Army, was invalided home with trench fever in 1916, and received the CMG. He died in Algeciras, Spain, in 1924.