Edward Elkan: "Sketches from My Life"

The memoir is addressed to "Dear children and grandchildren" by Elkan, mentioning that he was nearly 88 at the time. It describes his ancestry and background in a secularised North German Jewish family in Hamburg , his education, and his developing interest in biology. In 1914 on the outbreak of World War I he volunteered for the 67th Infantry Regiment. While undergoing treatment for an eye wound in Berlin he began to attend lectures at the University with a view to medical training. He was eventually transferred as a "Medical Student' to the army medical service. After the War he became a Zionist and having qualified in medicine and taken a course in tropical medicine he went to Palestine and practised as a doctor among the Jewish settlers there. He returned to Hamburg where he was the target of Nazi violence and emigrated to the UK, where he received assistance from Dr Helena Wright and other members of the birth control movement, and went to Scotland to obtain a British qualification, after which he moved to London as an assistant to a Dr Obermer. He then began work on the development of the use of Xenopus laevis D. for pregnancy testing, but with the outbreak of the Second World War was interned, on his release finding himself working in a former Poor Law Institution with civilian and military patients in Bishop Auckland. After the War he moved to a medical practice in Pinner while reviving and continuing the pregnancy testing work with Xenopus, as well as engaging in research on the pathology of the lower vertebrates.

1983

1 file

A copy of this memoir was given to the library at Wellcome Collection by Elkan's daughter Naomi Hull via Jesse Olszynko-Gryn in February 2014

See outline of his life as depicted in the memoir in the description

In Wellcome: There is material by and about Elkan in the archives of the Eugenics Society (SA/EUG/C.96) and the Family Planning Association (SA/FPA), and among the papers of Eileen Palmer (PP/EPR/A/1/1) and E G Griffith (PP/EFG/A/6).

Assigned to Wellcome Collection.