John Abram was born at Waterloo near Liverpool, the son of a corn merchant, and passed the greater part of his life in or near that city. He attended the Liverpool Institute as a boy and began his medical studies at the Royal Infirmary School of Medicine, completing them at University College, London, where he qualified in 1887. He served as house physician in the Royal Infirmary and then as assistant physician, from 1893 to 1896, at the Stanley Hospital. In due course he received the same appointment at the Royal Infirmary becoming full physician in 1902, and consulting physician in 1924. During the 1914-1918 War he served as consulting physician to military hospitals in Liverpool. He was closely connected with the city’s academic life, acting as demonstrator of pathology at University College in his early years, holding the chair of pathology in the University from 1906 to 1922 and then succeeding to the chair of medicine, which he filled for two years. He represented the Royal College of Physicians in the court of the University after 1926. Abram was president of the Liverpool Medical Institution in 1922-23 and also took an interest in local cultural activities. He was a collector of early English watercolour paintings. A keen golfer, he lived at Hoylake after retiring from practice in 1931. He died there, unmarried.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1933; B.M.J., 1933]