William Richard Gowers

Sir William Richard Gowers (/ˈɡaʊərz/; 20 March 1845 – 4 May 1915) was a British neurologist, described by Macdonald Critchley in 1949 as "probably the greatest clinical neurologist of all time". He practised at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptics, Queen Square, London (now the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery) from 1870–1910, ran a consultancy from his home in Queen Anne Street, W1, and lectured at University College Hospital. He published extensively, but is probably best remembered for his two-volume Manual of Diseases of the Nervous System (1886, 1888), affectionately referred to at Queen Square as 'the Bible of Neurology'.

William Richard Gowers, son of Hackney ladies' bootmaker William Gowers, was born above his father's shop in Mare Street, Hackney. By the time he was 11 his father and all three of his siblings had died, and his mother returned to live in Doncaster leaving the boy with Venables relatives in Oxford, where he attended Christ Church school. When he left school he tried farming, working for a family friend in Yorkshire, but this was not a success.

On a visit to Coggeshall, Essex, where his paternal grandmother lived, his aunt introduced him to the local doctor, and suggested that he might become a medical apprentice. Rather unwillingly he agreed, and spent the next three years apprenticed to Dr Thomas Simpson. Gowers' parents both came from Congregationalist backgrounds, as did Dr Simpson. Gowers was persuaded to try to take the University of London matriculation, as it was a university established for Nonconformists and others excluded under the Test Act from most other universities. During 1862–3, while an apprentice, he kept a shorthand diary, largely to practice writing Pitman's shorthand, a skill he decided to master before going to university. Two Congregationalist ministers at Coggeshall, first the Rev. Brian Dale and then the Rev. Alfred Philps provided guidance to the young man, who studied for his matriculation using the resources of the local Mechanics Institute. He passed his matriculation examination in 1863 in the First Class Division.

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