Dr. Samuel A. K. Wilson (1878-1937)
Biography
Wilson was an eminent neurologist at the National Hospital, Queen
Square, London, during the first half of the 20th Century.
Samuel Wilson
was born in Cedarville, New Jersey, USA, where his father was a clergyman of
Irish stock. He was educated at George Watson’s College, Edinburgh and
qualified in medicine in that city in 1902. He obtained a degree in physiology
in the following year and then spent 12 months studying neurology in France and
Germany.
In 1904 Wilson received a junior appointment at the National
Hospital for Nervous Diseases, London, where he remained until his career was
curtailed by his death in 1937. He became a consultant physician at the
National in 1925 and he also had links with King ’s College Hospital. In
the style of the time, Wilson employed his forename “Kinnier” as a
non-hyphenated extension of his surname.
Wilson’s reputation was
established after the publication of his classic paper in 1912. Although he was
a competent histologist, he had little interest in laboratory work and the
majority of his numerous articles were concerned with clinical neurology. He
founded the Journal of Neurology and Psychopathology in 1920 and his two-volume
book Neurology was published posthumously in 1940. Wilson was a famous lecturer
and his rich voice, penetrating gaze and incisive manner gave his witty and
lucid presentations a dramatic quality which attracted large
audiences.
He was a large, strong-minded, domineering man with a
commanding presence and he often clashed with his colleagues. Some regarded him
as arrogant and insensitive; it is said that he once instructed a patient with
an unusual neurological disorder “See to it that I get your brain when you
die”!
Outside his work Wilson was a competent linguist and enjoyed
traveling, golf and gardening. He died of cancer in London in 1937 at the age
of 59 years.
Nomenclature
In July 1911 Wilson received the gold medal of the University of
Edinburgh for a doctoral thesis entitled "Progressive lenticular degeneration:
A familial nervous disease associated with cirrhosis of the liver".
At
this time he was 33 years of age and employed as registrar at the National
Hospital, Queen Square, London. In the following year Wilson published an
article on the same topic in the journal Brain.
He described four
affected persons whom he had studied, giving autopsy details in three and
adding information concerning two further patients for whom details were
available. He also alluded to recognizable cases in the literature and
enumerated his conclusions, making the erroneous point that “the condition
was often familial but not congenital or hereditary”!
Wilson’s
paper introduced the term “extrapyramidal” into neurology and focused
attention upon the importance of the basal ganglia. Following his exposition
his name became attached to the disorder, which was also known as
“hepatolenticular degeneration.” Wilson preferred the eponymous
designation, insisting on referring to the condition as “Kinnier
Wilson’s disease.”