Leonard Colebrook, 1883-1967

Abstract

Leonard Colebrook was born in Guildford, Surrey, on 2 March 1883, the fifth child and third son of May Colebrook and Mary Gower). His father, himself one of a family of seventeen children, became a man of some importance in Guildford, and took a prominent part in social service there; by his first wife he had seven children, and by his second (Mary Gower) six—three boys and three girls. The last child of the marriage was Dora, who also became a bacteriologist. Apart from these facts, Colebrook records nothing significant about his ancestry. He was first educated at the Grammar School, Guildford (1891-1896); from 1896 to 1899 he attended the Westbourne High School, Bournemouth, and from 1899 to 1900 Christ’s College, Blackheath, Kent. He commenced his pre-medical studies in 1900 at the London Hospital Medical College; thence he won an Entrance Scholarship to St Mary’s Hospital, where, having acquired (according to Sir Zachary Cope) a reputation as a quiet diligent student, he graduated M.B., B.S.(Lond.) in 1906, in the minimum possible time. By his own account the teachers that most influenced him were: in chemistry, Dr McCandy of the London Hospital Medical College; in surgery, Mr Augustus Pepper of St Mary’s Hospital, whose house surgeon he was from 1906 to 1907; and, above all, in pathology and bacteriology, Sir Almroth Wright of St Mary’s Hospital Medical School. He had originally, no doubt as one result of a strict nonconformist upbringing, intended to be a medical missionary, but only a year after he qualified he was appointed Assistant to Sir Almroth Wright in the Inoculation Department of St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, where he remained until the outbreak of war in 1914. When beds were allocated to Sir Almroth in which he could give treatment by vaccine therapy, Colebrook was the first resident medical officer appointed to these special wards. He worked in the Department on vaccine therapy from 1907 to 1910, and on vaccine therapy and tuberculosis from 1910 to 1912; in 1912 he worked on pneumonia in Rand miners in Johannesburg with Sir Almroth Wright. The rest of his time before the first World War was spent on work on the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis with artificial pneumothorax.