Richard Caton (1842, Bradford – 1926), of Liverpool, England, was a British physician, physiologist and Lord Mayor of Liverpool who was crucial in discovering the electrical nature of the brain and laid the groundwork for Hans Berger to discover alpha wave activity in the human brain.
Early life and education Richard Caton was born in Bradford, son of Richard Caton M.D. and Mary Fawcett. He had a younger sister, Sarah (1846–1872). His father gave up his medical practice through ill health and moved to Scarborough where he died. Following this, the family returned to his mother's former home of Halifax. Caton became a boarder at Scarborough Grammar School where he developed a life-long love of the classics, reflected in later life when he wrote a number of papers on Ancient Greek medicine. Leaving school at sixteen, he worked in the Halifax and Huddersfield Bank but had to leave due to ill health. The medical treatment he received sparked an interest in practising medicine himself. In 1863 after receiving a small legacy from an aunt, he and his mother were able to move to Scotland where he attended Edinburgh Medical School qualifying MB in 1867, FRCP in 1868, and MD in 1870.
Physician After graduating, Caton was resident at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh. He moved to Liverpool in 1868 and became assistant physician to The Liverpool Infirmary for Children. He was physician to the Northern Hospital, Liverpool from 1876 to 1886, and physician to the Liverpool Royal Infirmary from 1886 to 1902, where he became consulting physician upon his retirement. He was Vice-Chairman of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine from its foundation in 1899.
Medical educator
Royal Infirmary School of Medicine (1869–1881) In 1869 Dr Richard Caton was Demonstrator in Comparative Anatomy at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary School of Medicine which at the time allowed degrees to be taken at University of London. He became part-time Demonstrator in Physiology in 1871. He played a crucial part in the expansion of the medical school, which included a physiology laboratory opened in 1873. At an introductory address to medical students that year he reported that "it may now fairly be said that for its size there is no school in the country more fully equipped for the work of medical teaching, in all its scientific and practical departments."
University College (1882–1902) Dr Richard Caton played a key role in establishing higher education in Liverpool. In November 1877, a joint meeting was held between the Liverpool Association for the Promotion of Higher Education and the Council of the School of Medicine to look to establishing a University in Liverpool. That same year, Experimental physics was included in the syllabus for London University degrees, which Liverpool could not provide. Thus, University College Liverpool was established by Royal charter in 1881. The Royal Infirmary School of Medicine initially kept its independence, but in 1884 became the Faculty of medicine when University College was affiliated to Victoria University, along with Owen's College, Manchester and Yorkshire College, Leeds. Victoria University had the power to award medical degrees with its own syllabus requirements. Caton worked as part-time Professor of Physiology from 1882 to 1891. When George Holt, the shipping line owner, endowed the Chair of Physiology at University College Liverpool in 1891 as a full-time appointment, Caton resigned in favour of Francis Gotch (1853–1913) who was succeeded in 1895 by Charles Scott Sherrington (1857–1952). An appeal for funds in 1887, which included £50 from Caton, allowed the construction of the Victoria Building in 1892 on the site of the former lunatic asylum on Brownlow Hill.
University of Liverpool (1903–1924) Dr Richard Caton was on the Court of Governors of the University from the start. He and others lobbied hard for an independent University of Liverpool which was achieved in 1903. Manchester and Leeds followed in 1904. In 1903, women were also granted the opportunity to be awarded degrees. Caton was the first representative of Liverpool University on the General Medical Council— an office that he occupied until his death. He was a Pro-vice-chancellor of the University from 1921 to 1924, and served for a time as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
Research On 4 August 1875 Caton reported to the British Medical Association in Edinburgh (Caton 1875) that he had used a galvanometer to observe electrical impulses from the surfaces of living brains in the rabbit and monkey.(Smith 1970)(Finger 1994). After Caton died, Hans Berger was one of few to recognise his importance and cited him in his 1929 report on the discovery of Alpha waves. He wrote:Caton had already (1874) published experiments on the brains of dogs and apes in which bare unipolar electrodes were placed either on the surface of both hemispheres or one electrode on the cerebral cortex and the other on the surface of the skull. The currents were measured by a sensitive galvanometer. There were found distinct variations in current, which increased during sleep and with the onset of death strengthened, and after death became weaker and then completely disappeared. Caton could show that strong current variations resulted in brain from light shone into the eyes, and he speaks already of the conjecture that under the circumstances these cortical currents could be applied to localization within the cortex of the brain — (Berger 1929).Caton wrote a number of clinical papers for the British Medical Association, which arose from observations during his clinical practice. He wrote on such diverse topics as intestinal antisepsis, acromegaly, rheumatic endocarditis, cardiac dilatation and hypertrophy. He also developed his interest in the classics, giving a lecture to the Royal Institution, London, in 1898 on the topic of the excavations carried out by European and American archaeologists who deciphered inscriptions and restored buildings such as the Temple of Asklepios at Epidauros. In 1904, he gave his first Harveian lecture to the Royal College of Physicians on the topic of early Egyptian medicine.
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