Robert Bowles received his medical education at St. George’s Hospital, qualifying in 1856, and spent the greater part of his professional life at Folkestone, where he was for long recognised as the leading consultant. He was physician to the Folkestone Hospital and St. Andrew’s Convalescent Home. Towards the end of his career, however, he moved to London where for some further years he enjoyed an equally successful practice. He was particularly interested in the relation of posture to breathing and contributed an article to Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine on the subject as well as writing others on artificial respiration. A regular visitor to the Alps, he advanced the theory that the sunburn affecting mountaineers was caused by reflection from the snow rather than by direct sunlight. His last years, after 1905, were chiefly devoted to gardening at Prior's Mesne, near Lydney, in Gloucestershire, where he had acquired a small estate. He was married and the father of three daughters and a son.

G H Brown

[B.M.J., 1913; Presidential Address to R.C.P., 1914, 22]