Sir William Arbuthnot-Lane, 1st Baronet
Encyclopedia
Sir William Arbuthnot-Lane, 1st Baronet, Legion of Honour (Fort George, Invernesshire 4 July 1856 – 16 January 1943) was a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
surgeon. His father, Benjamin Lane, was an Irishman who was posted as military surgeon to Inverness, Scotland, where William was born.
Associated for most of his career with Guy's Hospital
Guy's Hospital
Guy's Hospital is a large NHS hospital in the borough of Southwark in south east London, England. It is administratively a part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. It is a large teaching hospital and is home to the King's College London School of Medicine...
, Lane is known for three surgical procedures: the treatment of cleft palate, the application of internal splints
Splint (medicine)
A splint is a device used for support or immobilization of limbs or of the spine.It can be used:* By the emergency medical services or by volunteer first responders, to immobilize a fractured limb before the transportation; it is then a temporary immobilization;* By allied health professionals such...
to fractures using the strict aseptic 'Lane technique' and the treatment of chronic intestinal stasis. During the 1914–18 war, he organised and opened Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, a pioneering institution in plastic surgery. This controversial surgeon asked to have his name removed from the Medical Register, in order to promote the New Health Society (the first organised body to deal with social medicine), to avoid being disciplined by the General Medical Council
General Medical Council
The General Medical Council registers and regulates doctors practising in the United Kingdom. It has the power to revoke or restrict a doctor's registration if it deems them unfit to practise...
. He had founded the New Health Society in 1925 to publicise his views on healthy diet and life.
Biography
Arbuthnot-Lane trained and later worked at Guy's Hospital in London. Lane is best known for his attempts at improving alignment of fractures by using internal fixation. He started off using silver wire, then he used steel screws and this was followed by the use of plates and screws. Lane was regarded at his peak as the best abdominal surgeon in England and was called on to operate on Royalty, politicians and many society figures of the Edwardian era.Naturally rather shy, he found teaching and medical writing difficult, and taught mostly by example. His remarkable knowledge of anatomy and supreme surgical technique was much admired by surgeons from all over the world who flocked to watch him operate at Guys Hospital. This fame made him many enemies in London surgical circles. Remarkably, when he published a series on the operative repair of fractures by steel plate and screws, his fellow surgeons reported him to the General Medical Council
General Medical Council
The General Medical Council registers and regulates doctors practising in the United Kingdom. It has the power to revoke or restrict a doctor's registration if it deems them unfit to practise...
(the doctors disciplinary body in Britain) and attempted to have him struck off the Medical Register and thus destroy his practice.
Natural selection
In 1904, Lane met the Russian Nobel prize winning bacteriologist Elie Metchnikoff who fatally influenced his thoughts. Believing that DarwinCharles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's theories on natural selection were right, Lane noticed that the skeletons of manual workers had undergone changes in their lifetime. This led him to believe that natural selection was happening much faster than Darwin suggested. Metchnikoff unfortunately had become convinced that humans were changing much faster as well and that several of our body structures were now obsolete and through evolutionary process going to disappear. He suggested that the colon was one such structure, that it was going to shrink like the appendix
Vermiform appendix
The appendix is a blind-ended tube connected to the cecum , from which it develops embryologically. The cecum is a pouchlike structure of the colon...
and dreamed of a day when we could have an operation to remove it entirely.
Auto-intoxication
Lane realised that he had now developed abdominal surgical technique to a point where this was possible and decided to operate on some patients with very severe constipationConstipation
Constipation refers to bowel movements that are infrequent or hard to pass. Constipation is a common cause of painful defecation...
. Gratified by the results of this first surgery, he then performed total colectomies
Colectomy
Colectomy consists of the surgical resection of any extent of the large intestine .-History:Sir William Arbuthnot-Lane was one of the early proponents of the usefulness of total colectomies, although his overuse of the procedure called the wisdom of the surgery into question.-Indications:Some of...
as a cure for "auto-intoxication". This condition had no medical or scientific credibility and at a meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine
Royal Society of Medicine
The Royal Society of Medicine is a British charitable organisation whose main purpose is as a provider of medical education, running over 350 meetings and conferences each year.- History and overview :...
in London to discuss the topic in 1913 many of Lane's enemies seized the opportunity to attack his ideas and to publicly humiliate him. Lane's reputation was irreversibly damaged and despite being asked to lead the British army's surgical service during World War One and setting up the first plastic and reconstructive surgery unit to cope with war injuries, he never recovered. After the war he left Guy's Hospital and soon retired from medicine.
In 1926, still convinced that auto-intoxication was a genuine disorder, he appeared to have completely changed his mind about removing the colon. In an extraordinary volte-face he started promoting exercise, fruit and vegetables and bran cereal as the answer to bowel problems. Using his many royal and society connections he set up The New Health Society to promote programmes of health education that mirror those present today. Lane wrote columns in the newspapers, held public lectures and improved the distribution of fruit and vegetables. In this he was 40 years ahead of his time.
Lane's syndrome
(Otherwise Lane's disease or Arbuthnot Lane syndrome).A syndrome prevalent in women characterised by colonic inertia, contraction and lack of relaxation of the pelvis muscles, and rectal obstruction.
The Doctor's Dilemma
Lane is sometimes unfairly quoted as the model for George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's scurrilous surgeon in his play The Doctor's Dilemma. This is not true. Shaw himself stated that he had written the play before he had ever heard of Lane. The original of Cutler Walpole according to Shaw was an Ear Nose and Throat surgeon in London who had made a fortune by performing an unnecessary operation to extirpate the uvula
Uvula
The palatine uvula, usually referred to as simply the uvula , is the conic projection from the posterior edge of the middle of the soft palate, composed of connective tissue containing a number of racemose glands, and some muscular fibers .-Function in language:The uvula plays a role in the...
. Lane and Shaw never met, but Shaw was an admirer of his. He was fascinated by Lane's opinions about the speed of evolution and the two had corresponded on the subject.
Quotations include:
- The man whose first question after what he considers to be a right course of action has presented itself, is 'What will people say?' is not the man to do anything at all.
- If everyone believes a thing it is probably untrue!
- If you get a rude letter, always send a polite one back. It's much better.
Personal
Lane married first Charlotte Jane Briscoe (died 1935 aged 78), daughter of John Briscoe, son of Major Briscoe. They had issue. Sir William married second Hendon 25 September 1935 Jane Mutch (died Bridport 1966 aged 82), sister of Sir William's son-in-law, Nathan Mutch.He died from being run over during a wartime blackout
Blackout (wartime)
A blackout during war, or apprehended war, is the practice of collectively minimizing outdoor light, including upwardly directed light. This was done in the 20th century to prevent crews of enemy aircraft from being able to navigate to their targets simply by sight, for example during the London...
outside the Athenaeum Club
Athenaeum Club, London
The Athenaeum Club, usually just referred to as the Athenaeum, is a notable London club with its Clubhouse located at 107 Pall Mall, London, England, at the corner of Waterloo Place....
in Pall Mall
Pall Mall, London
Pall Mall is a street in the City of Westminster, London, and parallel to The Mall, from St. James's Street across Waterloo Place to the Haymarket; while Pall Mall East continues into Trafalgar Square. The street is a major thoroughfare in the St James's area of London, and a section of the...
.