Sir Victor Ewings Negus, MS, FRCS (6 February 1887 – 15 July 1974) was a British surgeon who specialised in laryngology and also made fundamental contributions to comparative anatomy with his work on the structure and evolution of the larynx. He was born and educated in London, studying at King's College School, then King's College London, followed by King's College Hospital. The final years of his medical training were interrupted by the First World War, during which he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps. After the war, he qualified as a surgeon and studied with laryngologists in France and the USA before resuming his career at King's College Hospital where he became a junior surgeon in 1924. In the 1920s, Negus worked on aspects of both throat surgery and the anatomy of the larynx, the latter work contributing to his degree of Master of Surgery (1924). His surgical innovations included designs for laryngoscopes, bronchoscopes, oesophagoscopes, an operating table, and tracheotomy equipment. His major publications were The Mechanism of the Larynx (1929) and his work on the clinical text Diseases of the Nose and Throat, starting with the fourth edition of 1937. Negus was also awarded several lectureships and published many medical papers and other works on comparative anatomy and laryngology. He became a senior surgeon at King's College Hospital in 1940 and a consulting surgeon in 1946. Negus was one of the founders of the British Association of Otorhinolaryngologists, helping to establish his speciality as a discipline within the newly formed National Health Service. He was a member of numerous international and national otolaryngology organisations, and presided over the Fourth International Congress of Otolaryngology in London in 1949. In this period of his career following the Second World War he also worked on the anatomy of the paranasal sinuses, and played a key role in rebuilding and establishing collections of animal dissections used by comparative anatomists. Negus, who married in 1929 and had two sons, retired in 1952, though he continued to publish on comparative anatomy and the history of medicine. His honours before and after retirement included the Fellowship of King's College, London (1945), an honorary degree (1950), the Lister Medal (1954), a knighthood (1956), honorary fellowships of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (1949) and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (1958), and the Honorary Gold Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (1969). He died in Hindhead, Surrey, aged 87 in 1974.
Early life and education
Victor Ewings Negus was born on 6 February 1887 in Tooting, London, the youngest of three sons of William and Emily Negus (née Ewings). His father was a solicitor, Justice of the Peace, and Deputy Lieutenant for the County of Surrey. Victor's pre-university education took place at King's College School. In 1906, he was awarded a Sambrooke scholarship to King's College London, on the Strand, where his studies for the next three years included premedical and preclinical subjects. After passing the required examinations, Negus proceeded in 1909 to the next stage of his basic medical education at the nearby King's College Hospital, at that time located on Portugal Street between the Strand and Lincoln's Inn Fields. Three more years of study led to the attainment in 1912 of the MRCS and LRCP (Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons and Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, known as the 'conjoint diploma'), marking his formal qualification to practice medicine. In the final year of these studies, Negus was an usher at the funeral service for Lord Lister at Westminster Abbey. Another connection with Lister's generation came when Negus worked as surgical dresser and house surgeon under Sir William Watson Cheyne, who had himself been house surgeon to Lister. The postgraduate stages of Negus's training involved specialisation in diseases of the ear, nose and throat, a direction influenced and guided by the otorhinolaryngologist St Clair Thomson (1857–1943). In the years following his qualification in 1912, Negus worked at King's College Hospital, and had started further clinical training at the Hospital for Diseases of the Throat in Golden Square, Soho, but this was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. Negus served in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) with the British Expeditionary Force for the first 18 months of the war. He initially deployed with the 1st General Hospital, then saw action in the trenches on the front line with a machine-gun battalion at the First Battle of Ypres. The effects of explosives during this period left him with tinnitus. This was followed by a period serving on hospital barges. In 1916, Negus, still with the RAMC, was posted to the 3rd (Lahore) Division (part of the British Indian Army) and took part in the Mesopotamia Campaign. As one of those who had deployed to the Western Front in the opening months of the war, he was later awarded the Mons Star. His service in the RAMC ended in 1919.
Surgical career and family
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