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- First Baron Horder of Ashford - see book entitled 'The Little Genius' (TLG). Raised to peerage in 1933. Entry in Pears cyclopaedia of 1949 - Horder, Lord, G.C.V.O., M.D. (b. 1871) Physician in-Ordinary to Prince of Wales,1923-36, and King Edward VIII. Jan.-Dec., 1936; and to King George VI. since 1937.
Royal Colleg of Surgeons, quote relating to portrait held: Thomas Jeeves Horder was born at Shaftesbury and spent his childhood at Swindon. After a brilliant student career at the University of London and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, he devoted himself to applying clinical pathology to medicine. He was over forty when he joined the staff of St. Bartholomew's and he at once acquired a reputation as an outstanding clinician and teacher of medicine. He was an unhurried and systematic observer who relied primarily on his own senses, and he possessed the rapidity of mental association which enables a present situation to evoke the relevant facts of past experience. Horder brought to his teaching irony, wit and sometimes sarcasm. A shrewd diagnostic success established him as physician to King Edward VII and he was a medical member of the Household of the succeeding monarchs. He rose to be senior consultant at St. Bartholomew's and held appointments as consultant to many other hospitals. Horder retired from the staff of St. Bartholomew's in 1936, at the age of sixty-five, but he was to have twenty further years of full activity in a wide variety of spheres. Retirement and unimpaired powers allowed him to expand his work in fields where preventive medicine and social amenities overlap; he saw public health as a unified problem which should take in all questions affecting human health and happiness. He held broad humane views on the ethics of such problems as birth control and noise abatement. He was particularly active in public life in the Second World War. He was honorary consulting physician to the Ministry of Pensions; in 1940 became chairman of the Committee on the use of public air raid shelters; and Lord Woolton, then Minister of Food, appointed him to be his personal adviser on the medical aspects of food rationing. After the war, Horder became a Trustee and the first Chairman of the Executive Council of the Ciba Foundation, to which he gave invaluable service in its formative years. Lord Horder was a public figure for nearly fifty years. From the Victorian era he acquired his great individualism and love of freedom and the peculiarly Victorian blend of rationalist faith and evangelical fervour, which showed itself in his optimistic belief in reform. Horder richly enjoyed congenial companionship, and he had an impish and tolerant sense of humour. His wide interests included literature and above all his beautiful garden, which he delighted to show to people.
Medical register for 1913:
Thomas Jeeves Horder, 141 Harley St London, registered August 18th 1896.
Member of Royal College of Surgeons England 1896.
Lie. 1896, Mem 1899, Royal College of Physicians London.
M.D. Univeristy of London 1899.
Time magazine article: Monday Dec 5th 1932
Jeeves to the Rescue
Sir Thomas Jeeves Horder, physician to James Ramsay MacDonald and Physician in Ordinary to the Prince of Wales, hotly denied at his fashionable No. 141 Harley Street office last week what he called "reports that the Prime Minister is in poor health."
The reports have been that Scot Mac-Donald is suffering from "cerebral anemia" or brain fatigue. Even the cautious Times has discussed the subject guardedly. Recently at Oxford, extremely polite Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, lecturing on "The Machinery of Government," created a sensation by the following remarks which were understood to refer to Scot MacDonald, though Lord Cecil did not mention his name: "Too many [Prime Ministers] have appeared to lose the faculty of decision. That seems to be one of the faculties that wear out soonest. To decide makes a considerable strain on the nervous force and the strain increases with apprehended unpopularity of the decision. Then ensues a search for some means to avoid effort. Postponement in its various forms is welcomed. Some so-called compromise is adopted which leaves all difficulties unsolved. Or a royal commission is appointed. Or the state of business in the House of Commons is declared to make action impossible. Or the matter is simply adjourned."
Time magazine article: Monday May 4th 1936
Physician in ordinary
The personal physician of King Edward VIII, Thomas Jeeves (''Tommy") Horder, Baron Horder of Ashford, steaming into New York Harbor last week, watched U. S. Public Health physicians scrutinize passengers' wrists for early signs of smallpox. Lord Horder was amused. Said he: "They look at wrists because they did it a hundred years ago when diseases such as smallpox were a real danger. From the standpoint of medicine we are no longer so much concerned with acute, fulminating diseases as with chronic diseases. With the wear and tear of life, heart, arterial and nervous diseases are increasing. Acute diseases have almost died out."
Dr. Frederic Ewald Sondern, president of the Medical Society of the State of New York, whose convention His Majesty's Physician-in-Ordinary addressed this week, tried to keep Lord Horder from speaking his mind to ship-news reporters. That self-reliant Briton, who repeatedly has said that "doctors get mighty little prestige without publicity," refused to be shushed, motioned Dr. Sondern to keep quiet, lit a new briar pipe, declared: "It can be said with every emphasis that [King Edward VIII] is in good health. He keeps himself fit, wants very little doctoring and takes so much exercise that sometimes he has to be restrained a little. He flies very little now, because he's very aware of the big responsibilities attached to his office."
Despite Dr. Sondern's attempted interruptions, Lord Horder talked about practically every topic which came to his mind or the minds of the ship reporters. Someone asked him about lengthening human life. Lord Horder: "Don't people live long enough? How to live more happily would be rather more to the point. People are living longer. Every year their expectation of life at any given age is increasing. But what is the use of living longer if we are not happy with economic conditions what they are and the infernal noise of cities, and with machinery we have created running away with us?"
For 20 years "Tommy" Horder has been doctoring the British Royal Family. Among his other patients: Countess Barbara Hutton Haugwitz-Reventlow, Actress Elisabeth Bergner, Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law, Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald. Lord Horder's usual consultation fee is $25. He charged $5,000 to testify to the sanity of Dame Fanny Lucy Houston, eccentric millionairess who repeatedly has tried to help finance British air defense. His offices are in Harley Street.
Knighted in 1918 and raised to the peerage in 1923, Lord Horder is Senior Physician to London's Great St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He is president of Britain's National Birth Control Association, president of the Voluntary Sterilization Society, president of the Council for the Disposition of the Dead, vice president of the Cremation Society. He is chairman of the Anti-Noise League and, with George Bernard Shaw and Herbert George Wells, belongs to the smell Society which seeks to suppress London's stinks. He dislikes health faddists, Nazis and cranks who denounce beer and white bread.
As a medical scientist Lord Horder is above par. Among his authoritative writings are Clinical Pathology in Practice, Cerebro-spinal Fever, Essentials of Medical Diagnosis. He will conclude a three-week visit in the U. S. by a paper on "Thyrotoxicosis" (toxic goitre) before a convention of the American Medical Association in Kansas City.
from
http://www.westoby.info/getperson.php?personID=I121&tree=1
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1871 - 1955 (84 years)
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