40 Facts About Henry Head

Sir Henry Head, FRS was an English neurologist who conducted pioneering work into the somatosensory system and sensory nerves.

Henry Head was born on 4 August 1861 at number 6, Park Road, Stoke Newington, as the eldest son of Henry Head and his wife Hester Beck and one of eleven children.

Early in his childhood, Henry Head's family moved from Stoke Newington to Stamford Hill where they inhabited a house decorated for them by William Morris.

Henry Head had, by this time, attended two-day schools and he now enrolled as a weekly boarder at Friends' School, Grove House, Tottenham.

Henry Head was given private home tuition in dissection and cutting microscopic sections.

Later in his life, Henry Head would be repeatedly mistaken for a German at frontier posts due both to his aptitude for the language and his markedly Germanic physical appearance.

Henry Head once stated that he could not recall a time in his life when he had not wished to pursue a career in medicine.

Henry Head often thought that the dream of becoming a doctor could have first been formed at the age of eight when his family was involved in an epidemic of scarlet fever.

Henry Head remembered being taken to spend a few days with the family doctor, Mr Brett, and one morning at breakfast he startled his family by repeating a procedure that the doctor had used during his illness.

Henry Head left Cambridge with a first class degree in both parts of the Natural Science Tripos, and decided to travel abroad once more, this time to inspect laboratories in Germany.

Henry Head was immediately impressed, both by the facilities and the man and indeed the feeling seems to have been mutual as Hering invited Head to stay with him at once.

In Prague, Henry Head carried out work on the physiology of respiration and was given an account of his own researches in colour vision.

Henry Head remained in Prague for two years, expanding his knowledge and his interests before returning to Cambridge to complete courses in anatomy and physiology and joining University College Hospital, London, where he was to qualify as a doctor in 1890.

Henry Head was a general physician with a speciality in physiology, driven by experience into an interest in pain which later led him to find a neurological basis for sensation in general.

Russell Brain comments that while Henry Head was a physician by profession, he was a born teacher.

Henry Head first showed his talent for teaching at the age of 21 when he addressed the Stoke Newington Mutual Instruction Society at the Friends Meeting House, Park Street, on the fertilization of plants.

Henry Head told me to buy Gee's little book on percussion, and kindly taught me throughout our journeys about physical signs, much to the annoyance of our fellow travellers; indeed in his characteristic keenness he spoke so loudly that as we walked to the hospital from St Mary's station people on the other side of the wide Whitechapel Road would turn to look at us.

Henry Head devoted a great deal of time to teaching.

Henry Head was a little too anxious to get exactly correct results when demonstrating to students; thus when he was mapping out areas of anaesthesia or hyperaesthesia the cottonwool, pin, etc.

Henry Head made every effort to be on equal terms with his wife; one prime example of this occurred in 1911 when, frustrated by his inability to speak French as well as his wife, he went to France for several weeks to remedy this.

Henry Head was a keen writer and on this too he and his wife shared common ground.

Henry Head had been an assistant mistress at Oxford High School and later became a headmistress in Brighton and his medical career had kept him in London.

Henry Head adored children, as can be seen in his poems and his poetry gives considerable insight into Henry Head's great desire for a child of his own.

Henry Head was his constant companion through the disease that slowly and cruelly destroyed him.

Henry and Ruth Head appear alongside Rivers in the novel Regeneration by Pat Barker, a name derived partially on the 'regenerating' of the minds of soldiers and the opinions of civilians in the First World War which takes place during the book and partially from Head's experiments with Rivers on nerve regeneration.

Henry Head first looked at sensation through physiological eyes, using his training from Prague and Cambridge, but he soon became aware that psychological factors had a major part to play.

Henry Head thought it probable that sensation related to innervation of the skin, but there was no accurate knowledge of cutaneous distribution of afferent fibres which enter the spinal cord by each dorsal root and terminate in one spinal segment.

Henry Head paid close attention to the function of the brain in integrating impulses of a different nature and from the various sense organs.

Henry Head recognised that his enthusiasm could sometimes limit his judgement so he always consulted a multitude of peers when conducting a new experiment.

Henry Head described the data they collected as being 'completely out of accord with any view of the mechanism of sensation as yet put forward'.

Henry Head spent the next few years following up on his findings.

The war prompted Henry Head to write poetry which was later published in 1919 in the volume Destroyers and Other Verses, it brought him together with fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was under Rivers's care.

Shortly after the war as Henry Head preceded his guest, Grantly Dick-Read, into the hospital dining room Read heard Henry Head's shuffling footsteps.

Sir Henry Head possessed the fullest as well as the wisest mind I have ever known.

Henry Head had Leonardo's lofty human compassion, humility, patience, and profound serenity of spirit.

Henry Head faced his debilitating illness with a great degree of heroism.

Henry Head had been rewarded with many honours for his art of science.

Eleven months after his wife's death, Henry Head died at Hartley Court.

Henry Head was cremated at Reading Crematorium on 11 October 1940 and his ashes scattered in the Gardens of Remembrance.

Dr Henry Head is played by Anton Lesser in the BBC series Casualty 1909.