Morrell Mackenzie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sir Morrell Mackenzie (1837-1892) was an English laryngologist and royal physician to the English and German royal families. He is best known for his controversial treatment of Frederick III of Germany, in which a silver tube was inserted down the king's throat which rendered him mute, unable to communicate except by writing. He was the founder of the first hospital devoted to diseases of the throat. He is considered by many as the father of laryngology in Britain. His manual on the use of the laryngoscope was so widely read that it required translations into German, French, and Italian. The manual was titled The Use of the Laryngoscope in Diseases of the Throat: With an Essay on Hoarseness, loss of Voice, and Stridulous Breathing, in Relation to Nervo-muscular Affections of the Larynx. It was published in 1865.
Mackenzie first discovered that papillomas were the most common benign tumors of the larynx in children and also was the first physician to write a detailed description of Recurrent respiratory papillomatosis.
BIOGRAPHY
Morrell Mackenzie was born into a middle-class family at what is now 742 High Road, Leytonstone, Essex on the 7th July 1837. An oval tablet commemerates the event - erected in 1909 by members of L.U.D.R.A. - the initial letters of which stand for "Leyton Urban District Ratepayers Association". Morrell's father was a general practitioner named Stephen Mackenzie. Mackenzie senior died in 1851 after falling from his carriage whilst on his rounds. Morrell married in 1863, to the eldest daughter of a successful middle-class merchant and businessman John Bouch, latterly of Bickley Park, Bromley. His wife Margaret bore him five children - two sons - Henry Harvey and Kenneth - plus three daughters - Ethel, Olga and Hilda. Henry was better known as "H.H. Morrell" and worked in the theatre. Kenneth followed in his father and grandfather's footsteps and became a doctor - he married in 1901 outside of his social class to Lilley Caton, one of seven illegitimate children of Eliza Caton (b. 1849), the daughter of John Caton (b. 1822) a labourer, of Thaxted, Essex. Olga married Benjamin Hannen jnr, son of Benjamin Hannen snr, a joint director of the builders and contracting firm "Holland and Hannen", later to become "Holland and Hannen and Cubitts". Ethel married Theodore McKenna, a solicitor. Morrell Mackenzie fell victim to many illnesses in his later years and caught influenza on 19th January 1892. Pneumonia set in as a complication, and his wife and daughters hardly left his side. On the 3rd February he became restless and his wife asked "Shall I send for Stephen?" (his younger brother - afterwards Sir Stephen Mackenzie, the distinguished dermatologist, who lived only a few doors away), to which Mackenzie answered faintly - "Yes, send for Stephen" - and he never spoke again. He was only fifty-four when he died, and is buried in the churchyard at Wargrave, Berkshire, near the country house he loved - known locally as "The Little House". A simple white marble cross, close by the lych-gate, marks his grave. Morrell Mackenzie was knighted in 1887, and also created a member of the Cross and Star of the Hollenzollern Order by his most famous patient, Emperor Frederick III shortly before his death on 15 June 1888.
