Edward VII, when Prince of Wales, was elected to the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians at the Comitia of 29th April 1897 and formally admitted at Marlborough House by the President, Sir Samuel Wilks, on 19th July 1897, in the presence of the Censors, the Treasurer and the Registrar. On this occasion the Prince " was presented with a diploma on vellum... contained in a case of red morocco; and with a gold-headed cane, after the fashion of those formerly carried by physicians The cane was a replica of one carried in turn by Radcliffe, Mead, Askew, Pitcairn and Baillie, and presented to the College in 1823 by Baillie’s widow.

Earlier in the same year he had inaugurated the Prince of Wales’s Hospital Fund for London, known after his accession to the throne as the King Edward VII Hospital Fund. During his reign he showed his continued support for his country’s medical services by opening a new wing of the London Hospital (1903), and by laying the foundation stones of the King Edward VII Sanatorium, Midhurst (1903) — which he formally opened in 1906 — of the King Edward Hospital at Windsor (1908), and of the new King’s College Hospital (1909). He took a considerable interest, also, in the reorganisation of the Army Medical Service and in the foundation of the Radium Institute.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1897, 1910; B.M.J., 1897, 1910; D.N.B., 2nd Suppl., i, 585, 599]