William MacCormac

Sir William MacCormac, 1st Baronet (1836 to 1901), was a notable British surgeon of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in Belfast, the son of the physician Henry MacCormac, he studied medicine and surgery at Belfast, Dublin and Paris and began practice at the General Hospital in Belfast before moving to London in 1861. He was an early and strong advocate of the antiseptic surgical methods proposed by Joseph Lister. Serving as a surgeon in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Serbian-Ottoman War of 1876, he became an authority on gunshot wounds. From 1881 he was surgeon at St Thomas' Hospital, and he served as president of the Royal College of Surgeons from 1896. He was created a baronet in 1897, served as surgeon in ordinary to the Prince of Wales and as sergeant surgeon to Edward VII, and went to South Africa as consulting surgeon to the forces in the Second Boer War. He died at Bath in 1901.