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Sir William Withey Gull, 1st Baronet of Brook Street (31 December 1816 – 29 January 1890) was a 19th-century English physician. Of modest family origins, he rose through the ranks of the medical profession to establish a lucrative private practice and serve in a number of prominent roles, including Governor of Guy's Hospital, Fullerian Professor of Physiology and President of the Clinical Society. In 1871, having successfully treated the Prince of Wales during a life-threatening attack of typhoid fever, he was created a Baronet and appointed to be one of the Physicians-in-Ordinary to HM Queen Victoria. Gull is remembered for a number of significant contributions to medical science, including advancing the understanding of myxoedema, Bright's disease, paraplegia and anorexia nervosa (for which he first established the name). Since the 1970s, Gull has been linked to the unsolved 1888 Whitechapel murders (Jack the Ripper) case. He was named as the murderer during the evolution of the widely discredited Masonic/royal conspiracy theory outlined in such books as ''Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution''. Although the conclusions of this theory are now dismissed by most serious scholars〔Paul Begg, ''Jack the Ripper – The Facts'' pp. 395–396 ISBN 1-86105-687-7〕〔Stewart P Evans & Donald Rumbelow, ''Jack the Ripper – Scotland Yard Investigates'' p. 261 ISBN 0-7509-4228-2〕〔Martin Fido, ''The Crimes, Detection & Death of Jack the Ripper'' pp. 185–196 ISBN 0-297-79136-2〕 its dramatic nature ensures it remains popular among producers of fictional works, including the 1988 TV film ''Jack the Ripper'' starring Michael Caine as well as the 1996 graphic novel ''From Hell'' and its subsequent film adaptation. ==Childhood and early life== William Withey Gull was born on 31 December 1816 in Colchester, Essex. His father, John Gull, was a barge owner and wharfinger and was thirty-eight years old at the time of William's birth. William was born aboard his barge ''The Dove,'' then moored at St Osyth Mill in the parish of Saint Leonards. His mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Chilver and she was forty years old when William was born. William's middle name, Withey, came from his godfather, Captain Withey, a friend and employer of his father and also a local barge owner.〔Kevin O'Donnell ''The Jack the Ripper Whitechapel Murders'' (1997) ISBN 0-9531269-1-9, p. 170〕 He was the youngest of eight children, two of whom died in infancy. Of William’s surviving five siblings, two were brothers (John and Joseph) and three were sisters (Elizabeth, Mary and Maria). When William was about four years old the family moved to Thorpe-le-Soken, Essex. His father died of cholera in London in 1827, when William was ten years old, and was buried at Thorpe-le-Soken. After her husband's death, Elizabeth Gull devoted herself to her children’s upbringing on very slender means. She was a woman of character, instilling in her children the proverb "whatever is worth doing is worth doing well." William Gull often said that his real education had been given him by his mother. Elizabeth Gull was devoutly religious – on Fridays the children had fish and rice pudding for dinner; in Lent she wore black, and the Saints' days were carefully observed. As a young boy, William Gull attended a local day school with his elder sisters. Later, he attended another school in the same parish, kept by the local clergyman. William was a day-boy at this school until he was fifteen, at which age he became a boarder for two years. It was at this time that he first began to study Latin. The clergyman’s teaching, however, seems to have been very limited; and at seventeen William announced that he would not go any longer. William now became a pupil-teacher in a school kept by a Mr. Abbott at Lewes, Sussex. He lived with the schoolmaster and his family, studying and teaching Latin and Greek. It was at this time that he became acquainted with Joseph Woods, the botanist, and formed an interest in looking for unusual plant life that would remain a lifelong pastime. His mother, meanwhile, had in 1832 moved her home to the parish of Beaumont, adjacent to Thorpe-le-Soken. After two years at Lewes, at the age of nineteen, William became restless and started to consider other careers, including working at sea. The local rector took an interest in William and proposed that he should resume his classical and other studies on alternate days at the rectory. This, for a year, he did. On his days at home he and his sisters would row down the estuary to the sea, watching the fishermen, and collecting wildlife specimens from the nets of the coastal dredgers. William would study and catalogue the specimens thus obtained, which he would study using whatever books as he could then procure. This seems to have awoken in him an interest in biological research that would serve him well in his later career in medicine. The wish to study medicine now became the fixed desire of his life.〔Great Doctors of the 19th Century (1935), Sir William Hale-White pp. 208–226〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sir William Gull, 1st Baronet」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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