Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter, 1872 - 1939

Abstract

The last formal address given by Wilfred Trotter, a few months before his death, was on the subject ‘Has the Intellect a function?’ His whole life gave the answer—Yes—for that rare personality was the very embodiment and outcome of intellectual training and self-control. An obituary notice of him written by a surgical colleague began with these words: ‘His death has deprived the world of one of the most contemplative minds that has ever been trained towards surgery. His penetrating intellect delighted in an impersonal activity of thought which had as raw material its own original observation of the workings of man’s mind and of the sources of their conduct. The main stream of his life ran always towards the pursuit of truth, and his interest in surgery was the joy of a fine intellect in the practice of a worthy handicraft.’ Surgery was his profession, and in it he rose to the highest mastery, becoming Sergeant Surgeon in turn to three successive Kings of England. Science gave him the test and aim of all that he regarded as good work, and the esteem of scientific men was the only honour that his ambition welcomed or would accept. Yet he made relatively few additions to that mass of verifiable knowledge which is comprised in science, and his memory will be honoured rather for the influence of his spirit and thought upon the minds of his generation.