John Burdon-Sanderson

[2] When diphtheria appeared in England in 1858 he was sent to investigate the disease at the different points of outbreak, and in subsequent years he carried out a number of similar inquiries, e.g. into the cattle plague and into cholera in 1866.

[6] He became first principal of the Brown Institution at Lambeth in 1871, and in 1874 was appointed Jodrell Professor of Physiology at University College London, retaining that post until 1882.

When the Waynflete Chair of Physiology was established at Oxford in 1882, he was chosen to be its first occupant, and immediately found himself the object of a furious anti-vivisectionist agitation.

This proposal was fought with the utmost bitterness by Sanderson's opponents, the anti-vivisectionists including E. A. Freeman, John Ruskin and Bishop Mackarness of Oxford.

He gave the Harveian Oration before the College of Physicians in 1878, acted as President of the British Association at Nottingham in 1893 and served on three Royal Commissions: on Hospitals (1883), on Tuberculosis, Meat and Milk[8] (1890), and on a University for London (1892).