Working in a field hospital he had a unique opportunity for the investigation of the effects of lesions in specific regions of the brain on balance, vision and bladder function.

While in France, Holmes met his future wife, Dr Rosalie Jobson, an Oxford graduate and an international sportswoman, to whom he subsequently proposed marriage while rowing on the Thames.

[12] Gordon Morgan Holmes' father was a successful farmer at Dellin House, Castlebellingham, County Louth, about 40 miles north of Dublin.

The early death of his mother, Kathleen (née Morgan), and his father's remarriage, deeply affected Holmes, and although he had three brothers and three sisters, he was a solitary child.

Holmes therefore returned to London and became a resident medical officer at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in Queen Square, under John Hughlings Jackson (1835–1911),[14] the doyen of British neurologists.

[2] Working with his neurosurgical colleague Percy Sargent (1873–1933) in a field hospital they had set up, he had a unique opportunity for the investigation of the effects of lesions in specific regions of the brain on balance, vision and bladder function.

While in France, Holmes met his future wife, Dr Rosalie Jobson, an Oxford graduate and an international sportswoman, to whom he subsequently proposed marriage while rowing on the Thames.

He introduced to England the painstaking physical examination of a neurologist and even outstripped William Gowers in his systematic collection of clinical data and its correlation with anatomy and pathology.

He investigated amyotonia congenita with James Stanfield Collier (1870–1935) (Brain, London, 1909, 32: 269–284) and described the first removal of a suprarenal tumour (by Percy Sargent) reversing virilism in the patient.