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On offer is the super, beautifully printed, diary specifically for the British Medical Association World Tour of 1935. This official diary was owned by Sir William Willcox as evidenced by the personal letters and other related ephemera in the book's pouch. The book contains the itinerary for every day of the tour, with information and maps relating to places visited, as well as all the travel and dining arrangements and travel tips given in detail. Space meant for the purpose and other blank spaces are used by the author many, many pages of handwritten entries relating to the voyage, the crew, the other doctors and medical related observations and traded words of wisdom from other practitioners. Here are some biographical notes based on an online review of a biography of Sir William: The Detective-Physician: the Life and Work of Sir William Willcox, by PHILIP H.A. WILLCOX, London, Heinemann Medical Books, 1970, pp. xiv, 332, illus., £3.50. In this book Dr. Philip Willcox has described the life and work of his father, Sir William Willcox, K.C.I.E., C.B., C.M.G., M.D., F.R.C.P., who was physician to St. Mary's Hospital from 1907 to 1935 and an expert forensic adviser to the Home Office from 1904 to 1941. It is much more than a work of filial piety. It describes a brilliant career, she like of which is no longer to be seen in the modern world. As Dr. Willcox writes in his introduction: 'Here was the case of a man who, without outside influence or financial support in his youth, at first earned his living as a schoolmaster, paid for his own medical education at St. Mary's Hospital at a time when there were no state sponsored scholarships, qualified as a doctor, became a Home Office pathologist and analyst, consultant physician and lecturer in several subjects at his medical school.' Before the first world war, Sir William Willcox gave evidence in twenty-five trials for murder or manslaughter, including those of Crippen, Steinie Morrison and Seddon. After the war, he gave evidence in other famous trials and throughout the whole of these periods he was on the consultant staff of St. Mary's Hospital, treating patients and teaching students and also running a large private practice in the West End of London. His retirement from the staff of St. Mary's was marked by a packed and emotional final ward-round about which the Dean (the late Lord Moran) wrote: 'What everybody thinks was shown by the turnout. I have never seen anything like it.' Sir William Willcox was born at Melton Mowbray in 1870 and throughout his life he indulged in the hobbies of a country squire: hunting, hacking and shooting. In the sunset of his life I myself remember shooting with him when he was on a visit to my parents in Buckinghamshire. Sir William Wilcox first took a degree in chemistry and then taught chemistry for four years in a private school, becoming a Fellow of the Institute of Chemistry. Clearly these years laid the foundation of his great knowledge of toxicology. He did not begin to study medicine until the age of twenty-five and he qualified with brilliant Honours in the London M.B. at the age of thirty. Soon Willcox joined the distinguished line of Home Office pathologists-Sir Thomas Stevenson, Pepper, Luff, Webster-and in his turn he trained Spilsbury and Roche Lynch. It is interesting to record that all of Willcox's distinguished honours from the State were won on war service in World War I. He served with the Gallipoli expedition and in Mesopotamia, where he made a great contribution to the recovery of the British Army from the early disasters of the campaign. Everyone who is immunised with TAB vaccine (as I myself am each year) should remember that this was pioneered by Willcox and Sir Robert Archibald. In 1918 General Sir Alfred Keogh, the great Director-General of Army Medical Services in World War I, who was honoured with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, a very singular honour for a medical man, wrote to Willcox and cast his mind forw.
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