Rheumatology Advance Access originally published online on October 25, 2005
Rheumatology 2006 45(6):777-778; doi:10.1093/rheumatology/kei166
© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Rheumatology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
HEBERDEN HISTORICAL SERIES |
Sir George Frederick Still (1868–1941)
S. J. Farrow
George Frederick Still (Fig. 1) was born in Highbury, London, on 27 February 1868. He was the son of a surveyor for H.M. Customs and one of 12 children, of whom four died in infancy. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School, where he received a scholarship to study at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Here he gained first-class honours in the Classical Tripos and was Winchester Prizeman. His interest in the classics continued throughout his life and he was fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, Latin and Greek.
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FIG. 1. Portrait of George Frederick Still (from the painting by Gerald Kelly, RA), reproduced with permission from Corporate and Legal Services, Kings College Hospital NHS Trust.
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He qualified at Guy's Hospital 1893 and worked as house physician
to James F. Goodhart (1845–1916), who had an interest
in paediatrics. In the same year he won the Murchison Scholarship
of the Royal College of Physicians. The following year he moved
to the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, initially
as house physician and subsequently as medical registrar and
pathologist. During this time he reported on 22 cases (of which
he examined 19) of children with a special form of arthritis.
In 1897 he published his results in a paper entitled ‘On
a form of chronic joint disease in children’. It was also
the subject of his MD thesis and introduced a previously unrecognizable
disease, known, as it is today, as Still's disease. He defined
the condition as a ‘chronic progressive enlargement of
joints, associated with general enlargement of glands and enlargement
of spleen’ (
Fig. 2), with the onset ‘almost always
before the second dentition’. Still noted that 10 of 12
cases began before the age of 6 years, and eight of these began
within the first 3 years of life. Girls were noted to be more
commonly affected than boys, in a ratio of approximately 1.5
: 1. He described the onset as usually insidious, with stiffness
and gradual enlargement in one or more joints and subsequent
extension to other joints. He also described an occasionally
acute onset, with pyrexia and possibly rigors. Still concluded
that this disease differed from rheumatoid arthritis in adults
in that there was an absence of bony change, even with advanced
disease, and in the enlargement of glands and spleen. He noted
a general arrest of physical development, a slow disease course
and progression to a condition of general joint disease. The
disease itself was not found to be fatal; the few recorded deaths
were due to complications. Interestingly, after this first paper
as a registrar, he hardly ever returned to write on juvenile
arthritis.
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FIG. 2. Rheumatoid arthritis in a boy 8 yr old. From a slide collection of images from Still's ‘On a form of chronic joint disease in children’ [1], reproduced with permission from Professor Patricia Woo.
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In 1899 he was appointed physician for diseases of children
to King's College Hospital, London, the first hospital with
a medical school to establish a section for children. In 1906
he became professor of diseases of children at King's, the first
chair of paediatrics in England.
In 1905 he collaborated with Sir James F. Goodhart as editor of Diseases of Children, which was one of the most popular paediatric textbooks of its day. In 1919 he contributed an article entitled ‘Some 17th century writings on diseases of children’ to the Osler birthday volumes. This work aroused his interest in medical history, leading to a book entitled A History of Paediatrics.
As he grew older he returned to his early love of the classics and on the centenary of King's College Medical School wrote a Latin verse entitled ‘Carmen Scholae Medicinae’. This was set to music and sung during the commemoration.
He retired from King's College Hospital in 1933, having been a physician there for 34 years. At this time he was president of The First International Paediatric Congress in London, one of the first honorary members of the American Paediatric Society, and Physician to Dr Barnado's Homes and to the Society for Waifs and Strays.
During his career he received many honours, and on his retirement in 1937 was knighted for having been the personal physician to princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. He had been chairman of the National Society for the Prevention of Infant Mortality for 20 years.
He remained a bachelor throughout his life, and lived with his widowed mother. After his retirement he moved to Salisbury, Wiltshire, and cultivated a passion for fly-fishing. He taught English language and literature at the Salisbury Cathedral school and published his poems. He was always described as a shy and reticent man with a genuine love of children. He died, aged 73, on 28 June 1941.
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References
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- Still GF. On a form of joint disease in children. Med Chir Trans 1897;80:47–59.
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Bibliography
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Hamilton EBD. George Frederic Still. Ann Rheum Dis 1986;45:1–5.[Free Full Text]Birch CA. Still's disease. George Frederick Still. Practitioner 1973;210:307–8.Sir Frederic Still. Obituary. Br Med J 1941;12:69–70.George Frederick Still (1868–1941). JAMA 1966;195:35.[CrossRef][Medline]
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