Alexander Haig

Alexander Haig (Avatar)

1853-1924

Vol IV

Pg 341

Alexander Haig

1853-1924

Vol IV

Pg 341

b.19 January 1853 d.6 April 1924

BA Oxon(1876) MA DM MRCS FRCP(1890)

Alexander Haig, only son of George Andrew Haig of Brechin, was born at Rumbling Bridge, Perthshire. For his education he went to Glenalmond, Harrow and Exeter College, Oxford. After taking a degree in natural science in 1876, he studied at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, qualifying in 1879. His first appointment was as surgeon to the Torbay Hospital, but he returned to London to become, in 1883, assistant physician to the Metropolitan Hospital, which in 1890 elected him full physician and in 1912 consulting physician. He was also casualty physician at St. Bartholomew’s from 1885 to 1887. In the latter year he joined the staff of the Royal Waterloo Hospital for Children and Women as physician to outpatients; he became full physician in 1896 and consulting physician in 1913. A sufferer from migraine himself, he investigated the effects of diet on this complaint and soon became convinced that excessive uric acid was responsible for many functional disorders. His book on Uric Acid as a Factor in the Causation of Disease (1892) attained a seventh edition and one on Diet and Food (1898) a sixth edition. Haig married in 1878 his cousin, Gertrude Mary, daughter of James Haig, barrister, of Lincoln’s Inn, and had one son and two daughters. He was a cousin of the first Earl Haig. He died in London, some ten years after retiring from practice.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1924; B.M.J., 1924; Presidential Address to R.C.P., 1924, 31; Al.Oxon., ii, 583]