George Owen Rees

Born at Smyrna in November 1813, he was son of Josiah Rees, a Levantine merchant and British consul there.

He was educated at a private school at Clapham, and acquired a knowledge of French, German, and Italian.

In the session of 1836–7 he was enrolled at Glasgow University as a student in the classes of botany (under William Dawson Hooker) and surgery (under John Burns).

Through the influence of Sir Benjamin Brodie, Rees secured the appointment as the first medical officer to Pentonville prison.

He was frequently associated with Alfred Swaine Taylor in criminal investigations—notably in the trial of William Palmer, the Rugeley poisoner, in 1856.

On the advice of Peter Mark Roget he communicated two papers to the Royal Society—On the Chemical Analysis of the Contents of the Thoracic Duct in the Human Subject (1842), and in June 1847, On the Function of the Red Corpuscles of the Blood, and on the Process of Arterialisation.

Rees joined Alfred Swaine Taylor in editing Jonathan Pereira's large work on materia medica.