Edmund Alexander Parkes

[1] In April 1842 Thomson was gazetted assistant-surgeon to the 84th (York and Lancaster) Regiment, and at age 22 embarked with it for India, serving in Madras and Moulmein.

[1] This was the site of the 1,000 patient prefabricated timber Renkioi Hospital, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel,[2] and set up by William Eassie Jnr, whose father's Gloucester Docks-based firm had constructed it.

[4] In 1860 an Army Medical School was established at Fort Pitt, Chatham, and Parkes, who had been consulted on the scheme by Sidney Herbert as Secretary of State for War, accepted the chair of hygiene.

Parkes died on 15 March 1876 aged 56, at his residence, Sydney Cottage, Bitterne, near Southampton, from tuberculosis, and he was buried by the side of his wife at Solihull.

At University College, London, a museum of hygiene was founded, of which the original trustees were Sir William Jenner, Edward Sieveking, and George Vivian Poore.

It was opened in 1877, and was formally incorporated under license of the Board of Trade; it was moved in 1882 from University College to new premises in Margaret Street, Cavendish Square.

[5] At Netley, a portrait of Parkes, by Messrs. Barraud & Jerrard, was in the anteroom of the army medical staff mess; a triennial prize of seventy-five guineas, and a large gold medal bearing Parkes's portrait, was established for the best essay on a subject connected with hygiene, the prize to be open to the medical officers of the army, navy, and Indian service of executive rank, on full pay;[1][6] and a bronze medal, also bearing the portrait of Parkes, was instituted, to be awarded at the close of each session to the best student in hygiene.

He started in 1861, at the request of Sir James Brown Gibson, an annual Review of the Progress of Hygiene, which appeared in the Army Medical Department Blue-Book, to 1875.

[1] In 1868 Parkes published a Scheme of Medical Tuition in The Lancet (later republished and dedicated to Sir George Burrows).

He delivered the Croonian lectures before the College of Physicians in March 1871, selecting for his subject Some Points connected with the Elimination of Nitrogen from the Human Body.

On 26 June 1876 Sir William Jenner delivered before the Royal College of Physicians the Harveian oration which Parkes was engaged in writing at the time of his death.

[1] The last work from Parkes's pen was a manual On Personal Care of Health, which was published posthumously by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Twenty-three names of public health and tropical medicine pioneers were chosen to feature on the School building in Keppel Street when it was constructed in 1926.