James Purdon Martin facts for kids

James Purdon Martin FRCP (1893–1984) was a British neurologist.

Biography

After education at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, J. Purdon Martin matriculated in 1912 at Queen's University Belfast and graduated there in with BA in 1915 and MA in 1918. During WWI he attempted to enlist in the British Army but he was graded as medically unfit because of his severe psoriasis. He graduated MB BCh BAO in 1920 and MD in 1922. He held a house appointment in Liverpool for about a year and then in March 1921 joined the staff of London's National Hospital for Nervous Diseases. There he was appointed to the consultant staff in 1925 and was dean of the medical school from 1944 to 1948. He qualified MRCP in 1922 and was elected FRCP in 1930. He was appointed to the consultant staffs of several hospitals in London. During WWII he was neurologist to Eastern Command. J. Purdon Martin gave the Lumleian lectures in 1947 on Consciousness and its disturbances considered from the neurological aspect and in 1963 the Arris and Gale lecture on Basal ganglia and locomotion. He was joint editor of Neurology for a number of years. For the academic year 1959–1960 he was a visiting professor at the University of Colorado Denver.

... in 1927 he established the association between hemiballismus and partial lesion of the Body of Luys. Since most of his work was clinical his reputation depended on sound observation leading to accurate diagnosis and selective treatment and was not to be found through lengthy lists of publications but rather embodied as a corpus of experience in his invited contributions, such as the 8th and especially the (1956) 9th editions of the magisterial (Price's) Textbook of Medicine.

Martin's book The Basal Ganglia and Posture (1967) includes case histories and clinical observations of a large group of patients with post-encephalitic Parkinsonism who were long-stay patients at Highlands Hospital, Winchmore Hill.

Louis Sachs, an American professor of neurology, wrote: 'Purdon Martin was endlessly thoughtful and ingenious in designing a variety of mechanisms and methods that made it possible for even the most incapacitated patient with Parkinsonism to achieve an artificial normality in gait and posture; lines painted on the floor, counterweights in the belt, loudly ticking pacemakers to set the cadence for walking, and these he always learned from his patients to whom his great book is dedicated. ...'

There were two sons from his first marriage. There were no children from his second marriage.

Selected publications