Biomaterial Database

Thomas Wrigley Grimshaw (1839-1900). Registrar general 1879-1900. 2009

Caoimhghín S Breathnach, and John B Moynihan

School of Medicine and Medical Science, University College Dublin Belfield, Dublin 4. Ireland. caoimhghin.breathnac@ucd.ie

Thomas Wrigley Grimshaw was born in Whitehouse, County Antrim, in 1839, and learned his medicine at the Dublin School of Medicine when its reputation was at its highest. If his teachers strayed from the art of bedside medicine into science it was into meteorology that had been revived by Thomas Sydenham, the 'English Hippocrates' in the seventeenth century. When Grimshaw was appointed Registrar General for Ireland in 1879 he diverted attention from the acute epidemics of zymotic diseases to chronic pulmonary affections that numerically were far more deadly. Cartography became an obsession with him, and he used it to show that Ireland was divided by phthisis into east and west. Koch's 'great discovery' in 1882 that tuberculosis is an infection not a 'constitutional' disease made him change his long-held views, and in the decade before his death in 1900 at Carrickmines, County Dublin, he became an active advocate of the new knowledge, distressed by the fact that thriving Belfast and its hinterland had the highest mortality from phthisis in Ireland. His concern for the health of young girls employed in large numbers in the linen factories was matched by his landmark advocacy of young ladies anxious to gain the licence to practise medicine in Great Britain and Ireland.

UI	MeSH Term	Description	Entries
D009026	Mortality	All deaths reported in a given population.	CFR Case Fatality Rate,Crude Death Rate,Crude Mortality Rate,Death Rate,Age Specific Death Rate,Age-Specific Death Rate,Case Fatality Rate,Decline, Mortality,Determinants, Mortality,Differential Mortality,Excess Mortality,Mortality Decline,Mortality Determinants,Mortality Rate,Mortality, Differential,Mortality, Excess,Age-Specific Death Rates,Case Fatality Rates,Crude Death Rates,Crude Mortality Rates,Death Rate, Age-Specific,Death Rate, Crude,Death Rates,Determinant, Mortality,Differential Mortalities,Excess Mortalities,Mortalities,Mortality Declines,Mortality Determinant,Mortality Rate, Crude,Mortality Rates,Rate, Age-Specific Death,Rate, Case Fatality,Rate, Crude Death,Rate, Crude Mortality,Rate, Death,Rate, Mortality,Rates, Case Fatality
D009660	Northern Ireland	The northern one-sixth of the island of Ireland - between the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea; northwest of France. The capital is Belfast.
D011173	Portraits as Topic	Works about graphic representations, especially of the face, of real persons, usually posed, living or dead. (From Thesaurus for Graphic Materials II, p540, 1995)
D004813	Epidemiology	Field concerned with the determination of causes, incidence, and characteristic behavior of disease outbreaks affecting human populations. It includes the interrelationships of host, agent, and environment as related to the distribution and control of disease.	Social Epidemiology,Epidemiologies, Social,Epidemiology, Social,Social Epidemiologies
D006801	Humans	Members of the species Homo sapiens.	Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D014397	Tuberculosis, Pulmonary	MYCOBACTERIUM infections of the lung.	Pulmonary Consumption,Pulmonary Phthisis,Pulmonary Tuberculoses,Pulmonary Tuberculosis,Tuberculoses, Pulmonary,Consumption, Pulmonary,Consumptions, Pulmonary,Phthises, Pulmonary,Phthisis, Pulmonary,Pulmonary Consumptions,Pulmonary Phthises
D049672	History, 19th Century	Time period from 1801 through 1900 of the common era.	19th Century History,19th Cent. History (Medicine),19th Cent. History of Medicine,19th Cent. Medicine,Historical Events, 19th Century,History of Medicine, 19th Cent.,History, Nineteenth Century,Medical History, 19th Cent.,Medicine, 19th Cent.,19th Cent. Histories (Medicine),19th Century Histories,Cent. Histories, 19th (Medicine),Cent. History, 19th (Medicine),Century Histories, 19th,Century Histories, Nineteenth,Century History, 19th,Century History, Nineteenth,Histories, 19th Cent. (Medicine),Histories, 19th Century,Histories, Nineteenth Century,History, 19th Cent. (Medicine),Nineteenth Century Histories,Nineteenth Century History
D049673	History, 20th Century	Time period from 1901 through 2000 of the common era.	20th Century History,20th Cent. History (Medicine),20th Cent. History of Medicine,20th Cent. Medicine,Historical Events, 20th Century,History of Medicine, 20th Cent.,History, Twentieth Century,Medical History, 20th Cent.,Medicine, 20th Cent.,20th Cent. Histories (Medicine),20th Century Histories,Cent. Histories, 20th (Medicine),Cent. History, 20th (Medicine),Century Histories, 20th,Century Histories, Twentieth,Century History, 20th,Century History, Twentieth,Histories, 20th Cent. (Medicine),Histories, 20th Century,Histories, Twentieth Century,History, 20th Cent. (Medicine),Twentieth Century Histories,Twentieth Century History
D055904	Meteorology	The science of studying the characteristics of the atmosphere such as its temperature, density, winds, clouds, precipitation, and other atmospheric phenomena and aiming to account for the weather in terms of external influences and the basic laws of physics. (From McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms, 6th ed)	Biometeorology,Climatology