Joseph Ormerod, who was born at Starston, Norfolk, the second son of the Venerable T. J. Ormerod, archdeacon of Suffolk, came of a distinguished family. His grandfather, George Ormerod, D.C.L, F.R.S, the historian of Cheshire, had married Sarah, daughter of John Latham, F.R.S, President of the Royal College of Physicians from 1813 to 1820 and father of Peter Mere Latham, F.R.C.P. One of his uncles was Edward Latham Ormerod, F.R.C.P. Joseph Ormerod himself was educated at Rugby and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He won the Chancellor’s prize for Latin verse in 1869 and obtained firsts in classical moderations and natural science. On graduating in 1871 he was elected to a fellowship at Jesus College. St. Bartholomew’s Hospital was his medical school and, after taking his B.M. degree in 1875, he received house appointments there and joined the staffs of the Great Northern and Metropolitan Free Hospitals. In 1878, he was appointed physician to out-patients at the City of London Hospital for Diseases of the Chest, and ten years later full physician — a post which he resigned in 1893 when at the age of forty-five he was elected to an assistant physicianship at St. Bartholomew’s, to which he subsequently became, in 1904, physician, and, in 1913, consulting physician.

In 1913 Ormerod was also appointed consulting physician by the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, to which he had been elected assistant physician in 1880 and full physician in 1900. During the War of 1914-1918 he was physician to King George’s Hospital, Stamford Street. Nervous diseases were his main interest and in 1892 he brought out A Student's Guide to Nervous Diseases. The Royal College of Physicians, however, had first claim to his allegiance in his later years. He was chosen as Assistant Registrar in 1908 and in the following year succeeded Edward Liveing as Registrar — a post that he retained till his death, proving an efficient and shrewd administrator. He delivered the Harveian Oration in 1908 and the Lumleian Lectures in 1914. He married in 1878 Mary Ellen, daughter of Edward Milner of Dulwich, and had four sons and four daughters.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1925; B.M.J., 1925; Presidential Address to R.C.P., 1925, 44; Al.Oxon., iii, 1044]