William Smith Greenfield

Portrait. Credit: Wellcome Library

William Smith Greenfield FRSE FRCPE LLD (1846-1919) was a British anatomist. He was an expert on anthrax.

Life

7 Heriot Row, Edinburgh

He was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire on 9 January 1846. He studied Medicine at the University of London graduating MB BS in 1872. In 1878 he succeeded John Burdon-Sanderson as Professor of Pathology at the Brown Institute. In 1881 he went to Edinburgh to become Professor of Pathology and Clinical Medicine.

In 1884, he was living at 7 Heriot Row, a magnificent Georgian terraced townhouse in Edinburgh's Second New Town.^[1]

In 1886, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Sir William Turner, James Cossar Ewart, Robert Gray and Peter Guthrie Tait.^[2]

In 1893, he gave the Bradshaw Lecture to the Royal College of Physicians. In 1893 he was also elected a member of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh.^[3][4]

He retired to Elie in Fife in 1912, being succeeded by Prof James Lorrain Smith.^[5] He died in Juniper Green south of Edinburgh on 12 August 1919.

Family

Deeply evangelical, one of his sons became a minister, and two of his daughters became Christian missionaries in India. Sons, Thomas Challen Greenfield BSc, A.M.Inst CE, M. Inst W.E., Water Engineer; Godwin Greenfield, a noted Neuropathologist founding the British Neuropathological Society.

Artistic Recognition

1884 sketched portrait by W.B. Hole. Credit: Wellcome Library

His sketch portrait of 1884, by William Brassey Hole, is held by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.^[6]

Publications

• Health Primers (1879)
• Pathology (1886)
• Cirrhosis of the Liver in Cats (1888)

References

1. Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory 1884-5
2. Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X.
3. Watson Wemyss, Herbert Lindesay (1933). A Record of the Edinburgh Harveian Society. T&A Constable, Edinburgh.
4. Minute Books of the Harveian Society. Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
5. Nature (magazine) vol 90, p.62
6. "Artworks | Page 13 | National Galleries of Scotland".