D'Arcy Power

D'Arcy Power was born on 11 November 1855 at 3 Grosvenor Terrace, Pimlico, in London, to Henry Power, himself a surgeon. Power was the eldest son of six boys and five girls.{{Cite web|first=Harold|last=Ellis|author-link=Harold Ellis (surgeon)|title=Power, Sir D'Arcy (1855–1941)|work=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|publisher=Oxford University Press|date=September 2004 |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35593|accessdate=2 May 2010|url-access=subscription}} He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood and entered New College, Oxford, before transferring to Exeter College. Though he wanted to be a physiologist, he ended up following his father into becoming a surgeon (at St. Bartholomew's Hospital). In this vein, he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1883, serving as a member of its council from 1912 to 1928, and being its vice-president for the years 1921 and 1922.{{London Gazette|issue=28619|page=4429|date=18 June 1912}} He gave the Bradshaw Lecture for 1918, the Vicary lecture for 1920, and delivered the Hunterian oration in 1925. He was variously also the Mitchell Banks Memorial Lecturer in 1933; a member of the executive committee of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund; President of the Medical Society of London; President of the [http://www.harveiansocietyoflondon.com Harveian Society of London] and President of the History of Medicine Society (previously section) at the Royal Society of Medicine, 1926 to 1928.{{Cite web|title=Power, Sir D'Arcy|work=Who Was Who|publisher=A & C Black|edition=online|via=Oxford University Press|date=December 2007|url=http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U230603|accessdate=2 May 2010}}{{Cite book|title=The History of The Royal Society of Medicine|last=Hunting|first=Penelope|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hFNrAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA=330|publisher=Royal Society of Medicine Press|year=2002|isbn=978-1853154973|chapter=8. From anaesthetics to proctology:Section of the history of medicine|pages=330–332}} Power also both taught and examined in medicine and wrote textbooks and articles for a number of medical journals.

Commissioned as a surgeon in the Volunteer Medical Staff Corps on 25 April 1888,{{London Gazette|issue=25810|page=2330|date=24 April 1888}} Power was given the rank of major in the Royal Army Medical Corps when its Territorial Force section was created on 31 July 1908, and was attached to 1st London General Hospital.{{London Gazette|issue=28181|page=7020|date=29 September 1908}} He was mobilised with the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, and promoted lieutenant-colonel on 22 August.{{London Gazette|issue=28876|page=6606|date=29 September 1908}} Until 1916 he was based at the officers' hospital at Fishmongers' Hall, and then rejoined the main body of 1st London General Hospital, serving until demobilisation in 1920, Power was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his service in military hospitals during the First World War in the 1919 King's Birthday Honours.{{London Gazette|issue=31395|pages=7425–7426|date=6 June 1919}} He retired from the army on 30 September 1921.{{London Gazette|issue=32786|page=306|date=12 January 1923}}

Power married Eleanor Fosbroke, daughter of the surgeon George Haynes Fosbroke, in 1883; she predeceased him in 1923. They had two sons and a daughter. The older son, also called D'Arcy Power, followed his father into part-time service in the RAMC in 1911,{{London Gazette|issue=28527|page=6456|date=1 September 1911}} and during the First World War became a captain and won the Military Cross.{{London Gazette|issue=29608|supp=y|pages=5570–5576|date=2 June 1916}} He transferred to the Medical Branch of the Royal Air Force on the formation of the new service on 1 April 1918{{London Gazette|issue=31112|page=369|date=7 January 1919}}—taking a permanent commission as a flight lieutenant in 1920{{London Gazette|issue=31978|page=7458|date=13 July 1920}}—and ultimately reaching the rank of acting air vice marshal by 1945 when he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire.{{London Gazette|issue=37119|supp=y|page=2947|date=8 June 1945}} The younger son, George Henry Fosbroke Power, died at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915 when he was serving as a lieutenant in 6th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment.{{cite web|url=http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/1624754|title=Casualty Details—Power, George Henry Fosbroke|publisher=Commonwealth War Graves Commission|accessdate=4 May 2010}} Power's daughter died young of whooping cough. Power, who was presented on his 75th birthday with a bibliography listing 609 of his "selected writings" by a special committee of the Osler Club, was also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (where he was, for some time, a member of the council) and President of the Bibliographical Society from 1926 to 1928. He was a member of the London Survey Committee, a voluntary organisation publishing architectural surveys of the capital.{{cite web |title=Members of the Survey Committee Pages 4-7 Survey of London Monograph 12 |url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/bk12/pp4-7 |website=British History Online |publisher=Guild & School of Handicraft, London, 1926. |access-date=27 February 2024}} He was also in 1903 a founding member of the Samuel Pepys Club. After his home was damaged in an air raid in 1940, Power moved in with his son at 53 Murray Road, Northwood, Middlesex, where he died on 18 May 1941.

Power's more notable standalone works included:

• [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002073525 William Harvey] (1897) on the life of William Harvey;
• [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009260357 Portraits of Dr William Harvey] (1913);
• Foundations of Medical History (1931);
• A Short History of Surgery (1933);
• Mirror for Surgeons, an anthology (1939).

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• [http://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/biogs/E000530b.htm More comprehensive biography] prepared by the Royal College of Surgeons

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Category:1855 births

Category:1941 deaths

Category:English surgeons

Category:English biographers

Category:Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of England

Category:Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London

Category:Royal Army Medical Corps officers

Category:People educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood

Category:Presidents of the History of Medicine Society

Category:Presidents of the Bibliographical Society