Norman Shanks Kerr (17 May 1834 – 30 May 1899) was a Scottish physician and social reformer who is remembered for his work in the British temperance movement. He originated the Total Abstinence Society and was founder and first president of the Society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety which was founded in 1884. In his writings he insisted on regarding inebriety as a disease and not a vice: "a disease of the nervous system allied to insanity", an "abnormal condition, in which morbid cravings and impulses to intoxication are apt to be developed in such force as to overpower the moral resistance and control."
His influential textbook on "Inebriety or Narcomania" was first published in 1888 and went through three editions. In the first edition he coined the term "narcomania" to refer to the disease of inebriety. Note that while 'inebriate' originally described a person intoxicated with alcohol, it later came to include other intoxicating drugs, especially narcotics, such as opium, chlorodyne, ether, chloral, chloroform or cocaine. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1873 and was also a member of the Obstetrical and Medical Societies of London, the Harveian Society and British Medical Association, being elected to the General Council for the Metropolitan branch.
Early life and education
Norman Shanks Kerr was born at Morrison's Court, Argyle Street, Glasgow, Scotland on 17 May 1834, the eldest son of Alexander Kerr (1800–1855) and Helen (née Shanks) Kerr (1813–1848). His father, Alexander, was a merchant and ship owner who lived at Florentine Bank House, Hillhead. Norman Kerr studied at the Western Academy and the High School, then worked as a journalist on the Glasgow Mail before entering University, graduating from the University of Glasgow in 1861 as Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) and Master of Surgery (C.M.). Even from these student days he was interested in the study of alcoholism; he was a member of the temperance Coffee Tavern Company of Glasgow and organised the first Total Abstinence Society for students in 1857. In 1853 he attended the inaugural meeting of the United Kingdom Alliance at Manchester and he was the first secretary of the Glasgow Abstainers' Union. In 1858 he was secretary for the non-political "The Independent Union" of students.
Career After graduation he was resident surgeon at the Lock Hospital, Glasgow, and then employed as a surgeon on the Montreal Ocean Steamship Company for about nine years. In 1863 he gave an account of a tour in America, including Portland, New York, and other large towns, "and referred at some length to the great question of slavery". He is reported to have travelled in Canada and the United States in this time and to have visited Portland in 1864. Dr Crothers notes in the first Norman Kerr lecture, "As a surgeon on shipboard he was known as a temperance doctor, and while not obtrusive or dogmatic in his views, he discouraged the use of spirits as a beverage." He was then in practice in Markyate, Hertfordshire, being appointed Markyate Medical Officer in 1871, until he resigned in 1875. He took part in a local meeting in 1872 by the United Kingdom Alliance supporting Sir Wilfred Lawson's Permissive Prohibitory Bill. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1873 with an interest in botany. In 1872 he wrote supporting the case for Eozoon canadense being recognised as a fossil.
Marylebone From 1874, he was employed as the Medical Officer of Health for Marylebone (Christ Church District) by the Board of guardians. The Christ Church District included Lisson Grove, an area of slum housing with single room tenements. In 1881 the outbreak of Typhus prompted Dr Norman Kerr to write a letter to the Vestry of St Marylebone.
In a letter to the local paper he wrote "The Sanitary authority, typhus being at once the most contagious and the most preventable of diseases, ought to have suppressed the epidemic more than a month ago, and thus saved several lives. Had I not stepped in, at some detriment to health and private practice (keeping up only with the aid of professional assistance, constant Turkish baths, extra diet, and the non-use of stimulants) and discharged the duty the Vestry neglected, the cases would have numbered hundreds, and the deaths at least twenties." The Victorian Turkish bath he visited is probably the one at 5 Bell Street, on the corner with Lisson Grove, established in 1860, the first in London. His other health precaution was a good square meal before going where infectious disease existed. Dr Kerr also believed that "smoke being retained in the mouth has … a kind of disinfecting filter through which the germs have to pass, and some of them are certainly destroyed, or at least deprived of their vitality". "There might be exceptions, he said. If a person could not stand smoking well, then it might depress his heart's action, and so lessen the resisting power to throw off the infectious germs. On broad, general grounds, however, he was decidedly of opinion that tobacco smoking, other things being equal, did give anyone exposed to infection a considerable amount of immunity. Dr. Kerr himself in attending cases of cholera always made a point of smoking." He wrote on the subject of cholera and having had cholera himself. Dr Kerr's health concerns were well founded since infectious diseases were common and in a previous outbreak nineteen years earlier the Relieving Officer and District Medical Officer both caught typhus and died. In this case he was able to joke about it, as reported by the Marylebone Mercury.
He went on to be one of the founders in 1892 of the Church Sanitary Association with the aims of ensuring to everyone pure air, pure water, a wholesome dwelling, and surroundings safeguarded from preventable diseases.
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