Cecil Biss was a New Zealander and began his career as a teacher before his arrival in England in 1872. He then won a scholarship to Downing College, Cambridge, where he was awarded the Winchester University prize and took first-class honours in the natural sciences tripos of 1875. He completed his medical training at St. Bartholomew’s, graduating as M.B. in 1880, and was then elected assistant physician to the Metropolitan Free Hospital and physician to the Westminster General Dispensary. His principal appointments were at the Brompton Hospital, where he was firstly assistant physician and then physician, and at the Middlesex Hospital, where he was physician to outpatients for seventeen years and lectured on botany and on pharmacology and therapeutics. His career was cruelly brought to an end by an attack of hemiplegia some twelve years before his death, and his last years were saddened further by the loss of his wife and one of his sons. Biss, who was a Plymouth Brother and a teetotaller, died at St. John’s Wood, London.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1912; B.M.J., 1912; Al.Cantab., I, 276]