D'Arcy Power

Sir D'Arcy Power, (11 November 1855 in Pimlico, London - 18 May 1941) was a British surgeon, medical historian, and contributor of some 200 articles on famous surgeons and other related figures to the Dictionary of National Biography.

Medical career

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. 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. 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 Harveian Society of London and President of the History of Medicine Society (previously section) at the Royal Society of Medicine, 1926 to 1928. Power also both taught and examined in medicine and wrote textbooks and articles for a number of medical journals.

Army service

Commissioned as a surgeon in the Volunteer Medical Staff Corps on 25 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. He was mobilised with the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, and promoted lieutenant-colonel on 22 August. 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. He retired from the army on 30 September 1921.