Charles Box went to Dulwich College for his education and started work in the City before deciding to become a medical student at St. Thomas’s Hospital. There he had a brilliant career, taking the B.Sc. degree in 1889, qualifying in 1891 and proceeding to the F.R.C.S. in 1893. He served in a number of junior appointments in his Hospital and in one at the Western Fever Hospital, and was then elected to the staff of the former, as assistant physician with charge of the children’s department, in 1900. He also acted as demonstrator of morbid anatomy for many years, even after his appointment as physician in 1915; and he lectured on applied anatomy and medicine.

In the 1914-1918 War he was attached to the 5th London General Hospital as a major. He retired to the consulting staff of St. Thomas’s in 1926, but continued his active work at the London Fever Hospital and the Royal Masonic Hospital. He was a Censor of the Royal College of Physicians and delivered the Lumleian Lectures in 1933; he examined for the Conjoint Board and for Birmingham and London Universities. Box’s most notable works were Clinical Applied Anatomy (1906), written in collaboration with W. McAdam Eccles, a Post-Mortem Manual (1910), and the section on fevers in successive editions of Price’s Textbook of Medicine. He was a fine clinical physician but lacked the gifts of popularity necessary for outstanding success as a consultant. He married in 1905 Marian, daughter of George Thyer of Bridgwater, Somerset. He died in St. Thomas’s Hospital.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1951; B.M.J., 1951; Times, 5 Apr. 1951]