Francis E. Anstie

He was educated at a private school till the age of sixteen, when he was apprenticed to his cousin, Thomas Anstie, a medical practitioner, with whom he remained three years.

In 1853 he entered the medical department of King's College London, where his teachers were Sir William Fergusson, and especially Dr. R. B. Todd, whose doctrines and practice produced a permanent impression upon Anstie's mind.

[1] On his first entrance into professional life Anstie was occupied in administering chloroform for the operations of Sir William Fergusson; but he soon went into practice as a physician, and became very fully occupied in hospital work and in journalism, being for some years a member of the editorial staff of The Lancet; while in the last few years of his life he was beginning to get a good consulting practice.

Some strange cases of fatal disease having occurred in the schools of the Patriotic Fund at Wandsworth, Anstie was called in to make an inspection of the buildings and investigate the causes of the epidemic.

In therapeutics he began with investigating the action of alcohol on the body in health and disease; and in this he was a pupil of Dr. R. B. Todd, one of whose leading principles was the use of stimulants in medicine.

In 1864 certain scandals connected with the administration of the poor-law infirmaries attracted public attention, and induced the proprietors of The Lancet to appoint a commission, consisting of Dr. Anstie, Mr. Ernest Hart, and Dr. Carr, to report on the subject.

Others followed, and one on the state of Farnham workhouse, published in 1867, led to an inquiry by the Poor Law Board, which justified the report of The Lancet commissioners.

[1] The completeness of his scientific work was, according to the DNB, much interfered with by his multifarious occupations and the ceaseless literary activity which circumstances imposed upon him.

Though finding little time for elaborate research, he was a zealous advocate of new and more accurate methods, and did much not only to make known the results of investigation, but to stimulate and sustain the scientific movement in medicine.