J. S. Risien Russell graduated as M.B, C.M, at Edinburgh University in 1886. He completed his training at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London and in Paris and Berlin. He then held a number of junior appointments at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, the Brompton Hospital and Nottingham General Hospital, and became assistant physician to the Metropolitan Hospital, as well as working in Victor Horsley’s laboratory in University College in his early career. He was appointed to the staffs of both the National Hospital, where on retiring he was made consulting physician, and University College Hospital, where he was also professor of medical jurisprudence after 1900 and, subsequently, professor of clinical medicine.

These latter appointments, added to the increasing demands of his private practice, put an end to the valuable research work, particularly on the functions of the cerebellum and on subacute combined degeneration of the spinal cord, by which in his earlier years he had emulated his distinguished colleagues at Queen Square. He was a contributor to Quain’s Dictionary and Allbutt’s System of Medicine. In the medico-legal sphere, he was frequently sought as an expert witness in the courts. He served as a captain in the First World War. A gifted and inspiring clinical teacher, he retained his vigour up to the end of his life. Risien Russell married in 1924 Ada Clement, daughter of Wilkinson Hartley, J.P, of Nelson, Lancashire.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1939; B.M.J., 1939; Image courtesy of the Queen Square Archives © National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery]