John Coutts was the son of John Coutts, a Scot who had settled on Tyneside and made a name for himself as one of the first builders of iron steamships. He was educated privately and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he distinguished himself as a sprinter and coxswain and graduated in mathematics in 1875. He qualified at St. George’s Hospital six years later and then held junior appointments at the Hospital for Sick Children and the East London Hospital for Children. He was elected assistant physician at the latter in 1885 and served as one of its full physicians from 1891 till his death. A diagnostician of high ability, he was Hunterian lecturer at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1896 and wrote articles for Allchin’s Manual of Medicine. A shy, unambitious man, who hated speaking in public, Coutts was a keen follower of University boat race practices on the Thames and had an astonishing memory for University and school sporting events, fondly repeating a friend’s comment that nobody had such a store of useless knowledge as he. Coutts, who was unmarried, died at Barnes.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1911; B.M.J., 1911; Presidential Address to R.C.P., 1912, 33]