A MODEST SCHOLAR

William Bowman was born in 1816 in Nantwich in Cheshire and was the son of a banker and distinguished geologist and botanist. In 1837 Bowman became the member of the Medical Department of King’s College, London. The following year, he became the prosector to the Physiology Lectures under Robert Bentley Todd (1809-1860), professor of physiology, who greatly influenced Bowman’s work.

In 1838, Bowman accompanied by Francis Galton (1822-1911), visited hospitals in Paris, Vienna, Germany and Holland. During this trip Bowman showed himself to be a skilled surgeon operating Galton’s inflamed ingrowing toenail using a bent pin and scissors.

In 1840, Bowman passed his examination for membership of the Royal College of Surgeons, and in 1844 was elected Fellow. During these years his most important histological papers were written. He was involved with Todd in the work on Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology (1852) and The Physiological Anatomy and Physiology of Man (1843–1856), the first physiological books in which accurate histological descriptions were related to anatomical structures.

Many illustrations used in this book were made by Bowman. In 1842, he gained the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for the paper, in which he described the glomerular capsule (now known as Bowman’s capsule) and its function.

Bowman became assistant surgeon to King’s College Hospital in 1840, and was elected surgeon in 1856. It was partly due to his influence that Joseph Lister, father of antiseptic surgery, was invited to the Chair of Clinical Surgery at King’s College.

Bowman also supported Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. In 1846 he became assistant surgeon to Moorfields Eye Hospital and he was the first of many distinguished surgeons who decided to specialise in ophthalmology in this hospital. Many of his contributions were remarkable, including his cornea description with its anterior elastic membrane (Bowman’s membrane), the radial fibres of the ciliary muscle (Bowman’s muscle), and glands in the olfactory mucosa (Bowman’s glands). He corresponded frequently with Charles Darwin and with Frans Cornelius Donders, who became his great friend from the time they first met together with Albrecht von Graefe at the Great Exhibition in 1851 in London.

Modest and humble

Hermann von Helmholtz described Bowman as one of those people who “have contributed most to ophthalmic medicine by extended application of well-understood methods of investigation and accurate insight into the causal connection
of phenomena”.

In 1880 he was a co-founder of the Ophthalmological Society of the UK and became its first president. Due to his many achievements he received honorary degrees from the universities of Cambridge, Dublin and Edinburgh, and was made a baronet.

To the end of his days, he was a modest and humble man, who never called any structure by his own name. He used the term ‘Malpighi capsule’ for glomeruli capsule (Bowman’s capsule), long after his work on this subject was highly appreciated. He declined the invitation to be a founding member of the Physiological Society in 1876 as he believed he had been too far from this field for too many years. He died of pneumonia in 1892.

In times when some call their findings by their name much before they are confirmed and appreciated by their peers, William Bowman should be remembered as a true and modest scholar. He still deserves, 122 years after his death, to be remembered as a giant of ophthalmology.

* Andrzej Grzybowski MD, PhD

Professor of ophthalmology, Poznan City Hospital, Poznan, Poland; Department of Ophthalmology, University of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn, Poland.