Sydney Arthur Monckton Copeman 1862-1947

Abstract

Sydney Arthur Monckton Copeman was born at Norwich on 21 February- 1862; he died at Hove, after a brief illness, on 11 April 1947. His career as an investigator and administrator lay in the field of public health and he spent thirty-four years in the service of the Local Government Board and the Ministry of Health, inheriting, almost in direct succession, the traditions with which Sir John Simon had established State Medicine in this country. He will be remembered especially for the important improvements in smallpox vaccination that developed out of his studies of the bacteriology of calf lymph. Copeman was the eldest son of the Rev. Canon Arthur Charles Copeman, Canon and Rural Dean of Norwich; preceding generations of the family were private bankers in Norwich. His mother’s maiden name was Metcalfe; she came of a Norfolk family residing at Ingoldesthorpe Hall. Copeman’s choice of medicine as a career may have been influenced by the fact that Canon Copeman, before taking holy orders, obtained the M.B. London in 1848, and was gold medallist of his year (1844) in Anatomy and Physiology. Copeman was educated at King Edward VI School, Norwich, and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, of which he was successively scholar, exhibitioner and prizeman. He obtained a second class in the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1882. He then went to St Thomas’s Hospital and took the M.B. of Cambridge in 1886. Copeman also acquired the diplomas of L.S.A., London (1885), L.R.C.P., London (1886), M.R.C.S., England (1887) and D.P.H., R.C.P.S. (1889). He proceeded to the M.D. of Cambridge in 1890 and was elected F.R.C.P. in 1899. In 1870, on Huxley’s recommendation, Trinity College had appointed Michael Foster of University College, London, as praelector and Fellow.