The conflict in the Ukraine highlights the importance of surgeons and medical attention in times of conflict; a timely reminder of the career of Humphry Sandwith – surgeon at the Hull Royal Infirmary in 1847 as cholera raged and then, off to Mesopotamia, Crimea and even to Paris during the Franco Prussian War. His life story reads like a prequel to the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Named Humphry after his Father, Sandwith (1792-1874) was born in Bridlington – his Father was a physician in Hull and his Uncle a Doctor in Beverley where Humphry was apprenticed – he loathed making up prescriptions and wanted to be closer to the action. He studied at the Hull Medical School, London and even spent time in Lille to learn French. At this time, he writes about an epidemic and then scarlatina in Bridlington in the 1820s – this before he qualified.
In 1842-3, he gave a series of lectures to the Hull Literary and Philosophical Society on the defective arrangements in large towns to secure the health and comfort of their inhabitants – a major contribution to the rising activism of local medical practitioners and Edward Francis Collins, the campaigning Editor of Hull Advertiser regarding rapid urbanisation and Public Health.
He was serving at the Hull Royal Infirmary during the Cholera outbreak and wrote a peer reviewed article on the topic. It can only be imagined the strain of working during the cholera outbreak but, despite ill health, Sandwell left to join an archaeological expedition to Nineveh. He spent two years in Constantinople and pivoted his career to become a correspondent for the Times.
When the Crimean War broke out, he served with Omar Pasha in 1853 and reverted to medicine to act as staff surgeon. In 1855, Sandwith was appointed Inspector of Hospitals. During the Siege of Kars, which lasted till the end of November, Sandwith had to contend with cholera and starvation; and after the assault of 29 September he had wounded men, both Turkish and Russian, on his hands. He had to rely mainly on horseflesh broth for his patients. When the Russians captured Kars, Sandwith was set free by General Murayov for his treatment of Russian casualties.
Returning, a celebrity, to London he was invited to meet with Queen Victoria to give her an account of his experience. Later he was given both the Russian order of St Stanislaus and, the French Legion d’Honneur.
Still with a passion for travel he became Colonial Secretary to Mauritius and then, moved back to London and started frequent travels to the Balkans – attracted by the complexity of the political landscape. In 1864 he wrote a novel which told of Turkish misrule in Bulgaria. In 1870 we fine him in Paris during the Franco Prussian War. In the late 1870s he was championing the Serbian cause – raising a huge sum of £7,000 from a lecture tour.
In his final years, he focused on agitating for an improved water supply for London – perhaps influenced by the Public Health drive he had witnessed in Hull back in the 1840s. Both he and his wife suffered ill health and spent time in Davos to recuperate. He died at Paris on 16 May 1881, and was buried at Passy.
We haven’t touched on his views on absentee landlords, nor his essays into archaeology and much more but, what we have is a picture of a man who carried his learnings on disease on crowded Hull far and wide.
This was a crowded life and well worth more research into the various twists and turns – much on public health and urbanisation; even more on the vital role of medicine in war zones. Professor Max Müller wrote of him: ‘I never heard him make a concession. Straight as an arrow he flew through life, a devoted lover of truth, a despiser of all quibbles.’ But he had the one-sidedness of a strong partisan.
With thanks to Rob Bell of The History Troupe
