How to Order

Sir Frederick Treves

Sir Frederick Treves had a remarkable life. He was a brilliant surgeon, a prolific medical writer, the doctor and friend of the ‘Elephant Man’, a field surgeon in the Boer War, and the man who saved King Edward VII’s life on the eve of his coronation. He was also a popular travel writer.

Frederick Treves was born in Dorchester, Dorset, in 1853. After the death of his father, a cabinet maker and upholsterer, in 1867, the family moved to London, where Treves finished school and then began medical training at the London Hospital.

He was an ambitious medical man, publishing in learned journals while still a student, and he advanced rapidly to a senior position at the London Hospital. He made contributions to surgical technique, social medicine, and anatomy, and became an authority on appendicitis. He was also a good teacher, and was known for his precision and an ability to explain complex matters clearly. His main failing was a tendency to use sarcasm on those who did not measure up to his high standards.

Treves was particularly interested in medical abnormalities, and it was in this connection that he first encountered Joseph Merrick, better known as ‘the Elephant Man’. In 1884, Merrick was being ‘exhibited’ in a shop near the London Hospital. Treves examined and photographed him, later presenting a paper on his case to the Pathological Society. Two years later, finding Merrick completely destitute, Treves bent the rules to give him a home at the London Hospital until his death in 1890.

Treves retired from the hospital in 1898, but almost immediately departed for the Boer war as head of a surgical team. He sent regular letters from the front to The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, and these formed the basis of his first non-medical book, The Tale of a Field Hospital (1900). When he fell ill with dysentery he was sent home to a hero’s welcome.

In June 1902, shortly before his coronation, King Edward VII fell ill with what his doctors agreed was appendicitis. The King was unwilling to undergo an operation, as he didn’t want to postpone the coronation and let the British people down. Treves, one of his doctors, is reported to have said: ‘Then, Sir, you will go as a corpse.’ The King allowed him to operate.

The following year, Treves was awarded a baronetcy and became Sir Frederick Treves of Dorchester. In 1904, he retired from medicine once again and embarked on a round-the-world journey, recounted in The Other Side of the Lantern, his first travel book. It proved enormously popular: it sold out in a week, was reprinted six times in the first year, and remained in print for almost thirty years.

Between 1904 and his death in 1923, Treves travelled, wrote, carried out work for the Red Cross, and produced books about the West Indies, Africa, Palestine, and Europe. He also wrote about his native Dorset. When he was in his mid-sixties, Treves retired for a third time, moving with his wife to the continent, where he hoped to live quietly and avoid the heart problems that had begun to trouble him.

Sir Frederick Treves died in Lausanne, of peritonitis, in December 1923. His ashes were sent to England for his funeral, which was held in Dorchester on 2 January 1924. The service was arranged by Thomas Hardy, then in his eighties, who, like Treves, was a past president of the Society of Dorset Men.

Treves had only one surviving daughter and no male children. He had previously decided not to ‘burden’ his brother William and his nephew (also Frederick) with the baronetcy, and his title died with him.

***

Click here to read about the Historical Background to Treves’ travel book The Other Side of The Lantern.

***

Links
Treves and Merrick Biographies
Short biographies of Sir Frederick Treves and Joseph Merrick at medical site whonamedit.com, a biographical dictionary of medical eponyms.

Frederick Treves’ Medical Career
An overview of Sir Frederick Treves’ medical career from Surgical-tutor, a resource site for medical students.

The Society of Dorset Men

Books
Treves, Sir Frederick: The Elephant Man, and Other Reminiscences. London: Cassell, 1923.

Trombley, Stephen: Sir Frederick Treves: The Extraordinary Edwardian. London: Routledge, 1989.