James Collier, second son of Dr. Alfred Henry Collier of Cranford, Middlesex, and his wife Sarah Stansfield, was educated at the City and Guilds Institute, London. He then studied at St. Mary’s Hospital, taking the B.Sc. degree in 1890 and qualifying as a doctor four years later. He held a number of junior appointments in his own Hospital and in the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, before being elected, in 1902, assistant physician to the latter; he became full physician in 1921. In 1903 he was made assistant physician to St. George’s Hospital, where he afterwards became physician, in 1908, and consulting physician, in 1928, and lectured on medicine and neurology. He also lectured on neurology at the Bethlem Royal Hospital and belonged to the visiting staff of the Royal Eye Hospital. He was an eminent Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, giving the Lumleian Lectures (1928), FitzPatrick Lectures (1931-32) and Harveian Oration (1934), and holding office as Senior Censor. He also delivered the Savill memorial lecture in 1930 and the Morison lectures at Edinburgh in 1932. Collier was a frequent contributor to Brain and the author of articles in Quain’s Dictionary, Allchin’s Manual, and Allbutt and Rolleston’s System of Medicine. He was gifted with a remarkable clinical memory and a penetrative insight that made him an outstanding diagnostician. As a teacher he was downright, dramatic and inspiring, and his weekly neurological clinic at St. George’s brought him well-merited fame. His wide interests outside his work included archaeology, philately and fly-fishing. He married in 1906 Minna, daughter of Dr. William Summerhayes of Brightling and had one son and two daughters. His elder brother was Horace Stansfield Collier, F.R.C.S. He died at his house in Wimpole Street, London.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1935; B.M.J., 1935; Presidential Address to R.C.P., 1935, 17]