William Senhouse Kirkes

After education at the grammar school of Cartmel he was, at the age of thirteen, apprenticed to a partnership of surgeons in Lancaster, and went thence to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, in 1841.

[2] Sir James Paget was then warden of the college of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and in 1848 he and Kirkes published a Handbook of Physiology, which soon became popular among students of medicine.

John Murray, the publisher, to whom it was a valuable property, next employed William Dobbinson Halliburton, under whose care no part of the original work of Kirkes, except his name on the outside cover, remained, and in this form the book goes through almost annual editions, and is still the most popular textbook of physiology for medical students.

[2] Kirkes was appointed demonstrator of morbid anatomy to St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1848, and in 1854 defeated Dr. John William Hue in a contest for the office of assistant physician.

[2] Kirkes' main research field was cardiology and vascular disease, and he first described embolism from vegetations in infective endocarditis in 1852.