G. E. Day was the son of George Day of Swansea and his wife Mary Hale, a descendant of Sir Matthew Hale. The failure of a bank had ruined his father financially and Day was brought up by his grandmother, Mrs. Hale. He was an undergraduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and, after graduating as a wrangler in 1833, proceeded to Edinburgh to study medicine. There he distinguished himself as a student by winning no fewer than five medals and prizes. Having qualified, he started to practise in London in 1843 and was appointed physician to the Western General Dispensary and lecturer on materia medica at Middlesex Hospital. In 1849 he took the Giessen degree of M.D. in order to qualify for the Chandos chair of anatomy and medicine at St. Andrews, to which he had been elected. As professor, Day was a popular figure and was responsible for raising the standard of the University’s M.D. degree. His tenure of the chair witnessed the publication of his two principal works, Diseases of Advanced Life (1851) and Chemistry in its Relations to Physiology and Medicine (1860). He translated works by J. F. Simon, Vogel, Lehmann, and Rokitansky. He retired to Torquay in 1863, but as the result of an accident remained an invalid for the rest of his life. Day married in 1841 Ellen Anna, daughter of James Buckton, solicitor, of Wrexham.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1872; B.M.J., 1872; D.N.B., xiv, 232; Al.Cantab., ii, 259]