Archive Item of the Month – Essay on the Pathology & Diagnosis of Diseases of the Ovary
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| BMS/34 |
July's archive item of the month if a beautifully bound and illustrated manuscript essay on The Pathology and Disease of the Ovary. Although on the cover and title page the author gives himself a pseudonym 'de Graaf' we know from the accession record that this essay was written by Austin Meldon and that it won the Pathological Society's gold medal in the 1863/4 session.
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| Plate I from BMS/34 |
The manuscript essay covers over 460 pages (I couldn't spot a single crossing out) and is accompanied by illustrations, tables and cases. The essay looks at the history of diseases of the ovary, and deals at length with their classification, diagnosis, symptoms and treatment. The essay is supported by cases 'noted by de Graaf' as well as the works of others. He includes a table of 'All the cases of Ovariotomy ever performed', giving the name of operator, age of patient, date of operation (the earliest is 1782), result, kind of tumour and marital status of patient.
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| Austin Meldon |
Austin Meldon was born in 1844 in Milltown, county Dublin. He studied medicine at the Catholic University (now University College Dublin) where he had a brilliant career winning gold medals in Midwifery and Diseases of Women and Children, Surgery and the Practice of Medicine, as well as first prizes in the same subjects. It was while he was a student at the Catholic University that he won the Pathological Society's gold medal for this essay. His career after leaving medical school was just as successful; he worked at the Jervis Street Hospital and Holles Street Hospital, published numerous work on gout, rheumatism and skin disease, and was President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Irish Medical Association. In a printed testimonial preserved in the Kirkpatrick Index Meldon included testimonials from some of the leading men of mid-late nineteenth century Irish Medicine, including William Stokes and Sir Dominic Corrigan who wrote that;
'Doctor Austin Meldon obtained the Gold Medal of the Pathological Society of Ireland last year (1864). I feel that, with this evidence of Doctor Austin Meldon's professional knowledge, any testimonial of mine is unnecessary as to his competency, as the prize he won was open to all competitors, and could only be obtained on superior merit.'
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| Katherine Pugin |
Dr Meldon married twice, his second wife Katherine Pugin was the daughter of the famous architect and designer Augustus Pugin (1812-1852). Pugin is best remembered for his work on the UK Houses of Parliament, but in 1838 Pugin was invited to Ireland by the Redmond family of Wexford, and he produced a number of works in Ireland, mainly catholic churches and convents. Meldon and his second wife had a son and daughter, the son George Edgar Pugin Meldon (1875-1950) followed his father into medicine, and in 1930 presented his father's prize winning essay to the College's archive.
Sources:
* Meldon, Austin, in the Kirkpatrick Index, RCPI
* Essays on the Pathology & Diagnosis of Disease of the Ovary, BMS/34
* Meldon, George Edgar Pugin, in the Kirkpatick Index, RCPI
* Moore, John William, 'In Memoriam – Austin Meldon', Dublin Journal of Medical Science, June 1904, pp.471-472
* Pugin Society web site - http://www.pugin-society.1to1.org/index.html