Sir William Henry Willcox: observations on beri-beri, scurvy, etc

Sir William Henry Willcox was born in 1870 in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, England. In 1895 he took up the study of medicine at St. Mary’s Hospital, gaining several gold medals, and qualifying in 1899. From 1904 to 1906 he held a registrar’s post at St. Mary’s, and in 1907 was elected to the honorary staff. During the First World War, William Henry Willcox, MD, FRCP, was a consulting physician to the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was the Consulting Physician to St Mary's Hospital, London and a founding member of the Empire Research Council. He held many medical posts and had a wide range of professional interests, rheumatology being one. He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and a detailed biography of him can be found on their website at http://munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk/Biography/Details/4775 .

The provenance of some of the material listed here is not clear. Original reports and correspondence can be assumed to have been kept by Sir William and passed to his son, but the letter of deposit to the Nutrition Institute explains that Dr Wilcox had 'obtained photostats of doucments that you have already seen', which may have been material at the Public Record Office. Those items listed as 'copies' appear to be fairly modern typescript copies. Dr Wilcox had arranged the material in chronological order, apart from the case notes (GC/185/21) and printed reports (GC/185/22-23), which he had placed at the end of his list. These have now been listed in the chronological sequence, as they would have come to Willcox's attention.