Henry Head
| Sir Henry Head | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
4 August 1861 Stoke Newington, Middlesex |
| Died | 8 October 1940 (aged 79) Reading, Berkshire |
| Residence | London and Dorset |
| Nationality | English |
| Fields |
Physiology Neurology Psychiatry |
| Institutions |
University College Hospital National Hospital, Queen Square |
| Alma mater | Trinity College, University of Cambridge |
| Known for | Self-administered experiments on cutaneous sensibility |
| Influenced | Siegfried Sassoon |
| Notable awards |
Royal Medal, 1908 Knighthood, 1927 Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1929 Honorary Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1930, Fellow of the Royal Society |
Sir Henry Head, FRS (4 August 1861 – 8 October 1940) was an English neurologist who conducted pioneering work into the somatosensory system and sensory nerves. Much of this work was conducted on himself, in collaboration with the psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers, by severing and reconnecting sensory nerves and mapping how sensation returned over time. Head-Holmes syndrome and Head-Riddoch syndrome are named after him.
Henry Head was born on 4 August 1861 at number 6, Park Road, Stoke Newington (a district in the London Borough of Hackney), as the eldest son of Henry Head and his wife Hester Beck and one of eleven children. 'Harry', as he was called throughout his childhood, was of strong Quaker roots and Head once described his parents as being "the centre of a multitude of friends and relations."
Head's father was an insurance broker for Lloyd's Bank and the third son of Jeremiah Head, formerly the Mayor of Ipswich, and Mary Howard. His mother was the daughter of Richard Beck, who had been a partner of his uncle J.J Lister in a wine business in London, and his wife Rachel. Head inherited a strong love of literature from his mother's side of the family through which he was related to E.V Lucas, the author. Through his mother Head also had surgical blood, related as she was to Marcus Beck. Several of Head's siblings were also to be successful in their own fields: Francis Head joined Lloyd's alongside his father and became the director of Henry Head and Co. until his death, aged 37, in 1905. Christopher Head, a Conservative Party councillor and mayor of Chelsea from 1909 to 1911, took over from his brother until his own death aboard the RMS Titanic in 1912.
Early in his childhood, Head's family moved from Stoke Newington to Stamford Hill where they inhabited a house decorated for them by William Morris. Henry had, by this time, attended two day schools and he now enrolled as a weekly boarder at Friends' School, Grove House, Tottenham. It was here that he met his first mentor, Mr. Ashford, a master at the school. Head described Ashford as "one of the best teachers of natural science I have ever encountered." This was the man, he said, to whom he "[owed] the fact that [he] was firmly grounded in the elements of natural science at an age when boys at an ordinary school in my day were ignorant of its existence." Perhaps it is to Ashford that we owe the direction Head’s later studies took, though it is clear that Head had a natural propensity for scientific learning, even at this early age.
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