Sir William Collins, surgeon and statesman / by Arthur Salusbury MacNalty.

  • Arthur MacNalty
Date:
1949
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sir William Collins, surgeon and statesman / by Arthur Salusbury MacNalty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Collins’s long and crippling illness hampered all their activities for many years. Miss Puxley tells me that on one occasion when she urged Sir William to return to politics, it was perfectly clear that only consideration for his wife deterred him. He said : “ Can you see her in the hurly-burly of an election ? And she would never stand aside.” More¬ over, in her last years he tended her day and night with affectionate solicitude, and when she died, though he kept his unbending attitude to the world, he was a broken man. No account therefore of Sir William’s life would be complete without empha¬ sising the importance to him of this union. Collins’s multifarious interests in other fields of work prevented his taking a leading position in ophthalmology. He wrote comparatively little upon the subject. He published a monograph on cataract in 1897, and during the war of 1914-18 he described several interesting cases of gunshot wounds in the eye. As Doyne medallist and lecturer in 1918 he spoke on “ Ophthalmology and the War.” He operated on the eye, especially for cataract, and his patients invariably appreciated his skill and attention, but he never troubled to make a large private practice, and his professional services were often rendered to friends and the impoverished without a fee. Stopford Brooke and H. G. Wells Many of Collins’s patients became his friends. Among these he numbered Stopford Brooke, that great authority on English literature. Stopford Brooke was a patient and friend of mine in his latter years, and he often spoke to me of Sir William’s abilities as a statesman and social reformer, likening him in these qualities to another close friend of Brooke, Lord Bryce, and speculating whether if Collins had been given the same opportunities he might not have equalled or even surpassed Bryce’s distinction in letters and diplomacy. Our common friendship for Stopford Brooke was a great link between Sir William and myself, and we rarely met
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