Of modest family origins, he established a lucrative private practice and served as Governor of Guy's Hospital, Fullerian Professor of Physiology and President of the Clinical Society.

Gull made some significant contributions to medical science, including advancing the understanding of myxoedema, Bright's disease, paraplegia and anorexia nervosa (for which he first established the name).

Elizabeth Gull was devoutly religious—on Fridays the children had fish and rice pudding for dinner; during Lent she wore black, and the Saints' days were carefully observed.

[6][7] In 1842, Gull was appointed to teach materia medica at Guy's Hospital, and the Treasurer gave him a small house in King Street, with an annual salary of £100 (£14,500 in 2023).

examination, he suffered an attack of nerves and was about to leave the room, saying that he knew nothing of the case proposed for comment; a friend persuaded him to return, with the result that the thesis he then wrote gained for him his Doctor's degree and the gold medal.

He was educated at Eton College, inherited his father's title as 2nd Baronet of Brook Street, and later served as the Liberal Unionist Member of Parliament (MP) for Barnstaple from July 1895 to September 1900.

Sir William Hale-White, author of Great Doctors of the Nineteenth Century (1935), wrote: "I was a lad then and my father sent me every evening to the police station to get the latest news.

"[9] The following passage appeared in The Times on 18 December 1871: 'In Dr. Gull were combined energy that never tired, watchfulness that never flagged; nursing so tender, ministry so minute, that in his functions he seemed to combine the duties of physician, dresser, dispenser, valet, nurse,-now arguing with the sick man in his delirium so softly and pleasantly that the parched lips opened to take the scanty nourishment on which depended the reserves of strength for the deadly fight when all else failed, now lifting the wasted body from bed to bed, now washing the worn frame with vinegar, with ever ready eye and ear and finger to mark any change and phase, to watch face and heart and pulse, and passing at times twelve or fourteen hours at that bedside.

And when these hours were over, or while they were going on-what a task for the physician !-to soothe with kindest and yet not too hopeful words her whose trial was indeed great to bear, to give counsel against despair, and yet not to justify confidence.'

The Blazon of Arms is: Azure, a serpent nowed or between three sea-gulls proper, and for honourable augmentation a canton ermine, thereon an ostrich feather argent, quilled or, enfiled by the coronet which encircles the plume of the Prince of Wales, gold.

Crests, 1st (for honourable augmentation), a lion passant guardant or, supporting with his dexter fore paw an escutcheon azure, thereon an ostrich feather argent, quilled or, enfiled with a coronet as in the canton; 2nd, two arms embowed, vested azure cuffs argent, the hands proper holding a torch or fired proper.The Motto is: Sine Deo Frustra (Without God, Labour Is In Vain).Sir William Gull was appointed Physician-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria.

The Times newspaper carried the following report on 30 January 1890: We regret to announce that Sir William Gull died at half-past 12 yesterday at his residence, 74, Brook-street, London, from paralysis.

Sir William was seized with a severe attack of paralysis just over two years ago while staying at Urrard, Killiecrankie, and never sufficiently recovered to resume his practice.

The inscription on his headstone was his favourite biblical quote: "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?"

In 1868, he had delivered an address to the British Medical Association at Oxford[28] in which he referred to a "peculiar form of disease occurring mostly in young women, and characterised by extreme emaciation".

He also records that she was frequently restless and active and notes that this was a "striking expression of the nervous state, for it seemed hardly possible that a body so wasted could undergo the exercise which seemed agreeable".

Miss K, who was described as a plump, healthy girl until the beginning of 1887, began to refuse all food except half cups of tea or coffee in February that year.

In 1873, Sir William Gull delivered a paper[37] alongside his Anorexia nervosa work in which he demonstrated that the cause of myxoedema is atrophy of the thyroid gland.

Along with the French neurologist Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, his work enabled paraplegic symptoms to be understood in context with the prevailing, limited understanding of spinal cord pathology, for the first time.

[41] Earlier work by the Irish physician Robert Bentley Todd (1847), Ernest Horn, and Moritz Heinrich Romberg(1851) had described Tabes dorsalis and noted atrophy of the spinal cord, but in an important paper, Gull also stressed the involvement of the posterior column in paraplegia with sensory ataxia [12].

A word rightly imposed is a landmark indicating so much recovered from the region of ignorance" Published Writings, Volume 156, "Study of Medicine" "Never forget that it is not a pneumonia, but a pneumonic man who is your patient.

[47] This article comments: "the identity of that incarnate fiend was settled some time ago" and that the murderer was "a demented physician afflicted with wildly uncontrollable erotic mania."

The article goes on to allege that the preacher and spiritualist Robert James Lees played a leading role in the physician's arrest by using his clairvoyant powers to divine that the Whitechapel murderer lived in a house in Mayfair.

He persuaded police to enter the house, the home of a distinguished physician, who was allegedly removed to a private insane asylum in Islington under the name of Thomas Mason.

On 2 May 1895, the Fort Wayne Weekly Gazette published a follow-up quoting William Greer [sic] as reaffirming the accuracy of the story, and describing Dr. Howard as a "well-known London physician who passed through San Francisco on a tour of the world several months ago".

He refers to the killer as "S" throughout the article without ever identifying him, but the identity of "S" is widely presumed to be Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, Queen Victoria's grandson and heir presumptive to the throne.

He resigned his commission shortly after the raiding of some premises in Cleveland Street, which were frequented by aristocrats and well-to-do homosexuals.Stowell apparently devised his theory using Sir William Gull's private papers as his primary source material.

[53]In 1979, the fictional character Sir Thomas Spivey, portrayed by actor Roy Lansford, appears in Murder by Decree, starring Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes and James Mason as Doctor Watson.

A fictionalised Sir William Gull appears in Iain Sinclair's 1987 novel White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings in a plotline based on Stephen Knight's Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution.

The plotline reveals Sir William Gull as the murderer, assisted by coachman John Netley, but otherwise excludes the main elements of the Royal conspiracy theory.