Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt KCB, MA, MD, ScD, FRS[1] (20 July 1836 – 22 February 1925) was an English physician best known for his role as president of the British Medical Association 1920, for inventing the clinical thermometer, and for supporting Sir William Osler in founding the History of Medicine Society.

[3] After studying medicine at St George's Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, London, and taking the Cambridge MB degree in 1861, he went to Paris[2] and attended the clinics of Armand Trousseau, Duchenne de Boulogne (G. B.

[4] After serving as one of the Commissioners for Lunacy in England and Wales from 1889,[4] Allbutt became Regius Professor of Physic (medicine) at the University of Cambridge in 1892, and was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1907.

[citation needed] From 1861 to 1889 Allbutt was a successful consulting physician in Leeds, when he commissioned Edward Schroeder Prior to design Carr Manor for his residence.

Allbutt was Physician at the General Infirmary at Leeds where he introduced the ophthalmoscope, weighing machine and microscope to the wards.

His version of the thermometer, devised in 1867, was quickly adopted elsewhere, instead of the model previously in use, which was one foot long and which patients were required to hold for about twenty minutes.

He argued use of the ophthalmoscope would help remove 'the metaphysical or transcendental habit of thought' and bring a 'more vigorous and more philosophical mode of investigation' to disorders of the brain.

[7] His other work included initiating and encouraging the practice of consultation between medical witnesses before the hearing of legal cases.

[2] The novelist George Eliot described Allbutt as a 'good, clever and graceful man, enough to enable one to be cheerful under the horrible smoke of ugly Leeds'.

[8] Allbutt was president of the British Medical Association in 1920 and in the same year was admitted a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.

[9] Allbutt continued as regius professor of physic at Cambridge until his death in 1925 when Sir Humphry Rolleston, Physician-in-Ordinary to King George V was elected as his successor.

[4] In the article Medicine which he contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911), Volume 18 (pages 41 to 64), the first column began by stating that the science of medicine as then understood was concerned with the treatment of disease, and included pathology, therapeutics and pharmacology which were the subject of separate articles.