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James Walker Dawson
Scottish physician, born 1870, India; died June 26, 1927, Edinburgh.
Associated eponyms:
Dawson's fingers
A condition affecting the brain of Multiple Sclerosis patients.
Biography:
James Walker Dawson was educated at the Edinburgh Institution and began medical studies at the University of Edinburgh in 1888. Before the course was completed, he suffered a breakdown and spent the next eleven years abroad, mainly in India and New Zealand, where for some time he was engaged in sheep farming. In 1903 he was able to resume his studies and graduated M.B., C.M. in the following year. Immediately after graduation he devoted himself to research work, and for several years collaborated with Alexander Bruce in the laboratory of the Royal College of Physicians.
In 1910 he received the Syme Fellowship in Surgery and in 1911 he graduated M.D., receiving a gold medal for his thesis dealing with "Studies on Inflammation". He was the author of an elaborate monograph on the histology of disseminated sclerosis, published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1915. This work through much light upon the minute changes that occur in this obscure disease and the same subject was the basis for a thesis for the D.Sc. degree, which he took in 1916.
During the war, 1915-1919, Dawson was occupied in teaching pathology in connexion with the class in Edinburgh University and in the Royal Infirmary. He received many offers of appointments at home and abroad, but on grounds of health he preferred to spend his time in quite work in the laboratory of the Royal College of Physicians.
He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1924. For many years he acted as an expert on histology in the laboratory of the college, and here his opinion as to the pathological nature of tumours and other tissues was held in the highest esteem by his colleagues. For some moths before his death Dawson had been engaged in preparing the Three Morison Lectures, which he had been invited to hold before the Royal College of Physicians.
Dawson was a man of modest and retiring disposition who enjoyed in a very high measure the affection and respect of his professional colleagues
James Walker Dawson was married to Edith Kate Dawson, herself a pathologist of international repute and distinction.
We thank Stuart R. Pomerantz for information submitted.
Bibliography:
- J. W. Dawson:
The spirit of leisure and the spirit of work.
Edinburgh Medical Journal, January 1924.
- James Walker Dawson, M.D., D.Sc., F.R.C.P.E., F.R.C.S.E.
British Medical Journal, July 16, 1927, 2 (3471): 116–117.
- Edith Kate Dawson:
In memoriam James Walker Dawson 1870-1927.
The Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, 1928, 31 (1): 117-121.
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