William Clowes was the first surgeon of distinction at Barts, he served the hospital from 1576 to 1585. His six books, written in English rather than the customary Latin, have been described as the best surgical writings of the Elizabethan age. They include works on tuberculosis, syphilis and wounds by gunshot and other weapons.

During William Harvey’s time at Barts (1609-1643) he carried out many dissections and experiments which led to his discovery of the circulation of the blood. His book 'Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis', published in 1628, was later recognised as a great foundation of modern medicine and is responsible for Harvey's enduring renown and reputation as Barts' most famous physician.

Harvey's greatest discovery was on the circulation of the blood. The Greek doctors had believed that blood was created by the heart, then carried by veins to the limbs where it was used up. Harvey disagreed - he likened the heart to the water pump (a new invention at the time) and said that the heart pumped the blood around the body. He carried out many experiments and eventually proved the idea when he realised that the amount of blood leaving the heart every second was far too high to have been produced by the body.

Harvey also made considerable contributions to embryology, anatomy, neurology and obstetrics. He was physician to King James I and was in attendance upon King Charles I at the battle of Edgehill (1642) in the Civil War.

John Freke was surgeon to Barts 1729-55 and a Governor 1736-56. He was the next outstanding personality at Barts following William Harvey, and with Percival Pott, he played a prominent part in the separation of surgeons from the barbers and the establishment of the Company of Surgeons in 1745. He designed, among other instruments, an improved obstetric forceps. In 1727 the Governors of Barts appreciated the need for more specialisation and Freke was appointed to take care of patients with diseases of the eye, becoming the first ophthalmic surgeon.

A friend of William Hogarth, he is regarded as one of the most distinguished figures in the history of Barts.

Percival Pott was the most famous of the 18th century surgeons at Barts, and during his tenure from 1749-1787, introduced many improvements into the practice of surgery. His name is associated with Pott’s fracture and Pott’s disease (of the spine) but he also wrote on ruptures, tumours and head injuries, and was one of the first to recognise occupational disease through his study of chimney sweeps’ cancer. He was also an inspiring teacher.

Together with the physician James Maddocks, Blizard founded England’s first clinical medical school - The London Hospital Medical College. In 1791 he founded the Samaritan Society, the first medical social work society, for London Hospital patients. He was among the first surgeons to tie the subclavian artery for axillary aneurism.

Sir William Lawrence was surgeon at Barts 1824-1865. He achieved early recognition by winning the Jacksonian Prize in 1806 with an essay on the best mode of treatment for hernias. He succeeded John Abernethy in 1829 as Lecturer on Surgery at Barts and became the dominating influence in the Medical School. Lawrence was one of the founders of British ophthalmology.

James Parkinson is known throughout the world for his description of ‘paralysis agitans’ in 1817, the shaking palsy, now know as Parkinson’s disease. He became a pupil at The London Hospital in 1776, and like his father, and subsequently his son, worked as an apothecary in nearby Hoxton.

Dr Thomas trained at The London Hospital and practised at Mile End, but developed tuberculosis and moved to France. He worked at the Necker Hospital in Paris under Renne Laennec, the first clinician to popularise the stethoscope in the 1810s. Davies was probably first to demonstrate the stethoscope in Britain. He became assistant Physician to the London Hospital in 1827, and in 1814 helped Dr Isaac Buxton found the Royal Chest Hospital in City Road, the first chest hospital in the world.

In childhood Little suffered from polio, leaving his left foot deformed. As a student at The London and after he became a surgeon, he searched for ways to help alleviate such deformities. His own club foot was helped by tenotomy, a procedure carried out by the German surgeon Stromeyer. Little learned the operation and brought it to England. He became physician to the London Hospital in 1839. He published widely on the subject and in 1840 established what became the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. He is regarded as the pioneer of orthopaedic surgery in Britain. Little’s Disease (spastic diplegia) is named after him.

Pereira trained at Barts and became Chemistry lecturer and Physician to The London. His book on material medica was the first great English work on pharmacology and he was foremost in putting the knowledge and use of drugs on a scientific footing. In 1842 he became the first professor of material medica to the Pharmaceutical Society.

Barts was one of the first hospitals to encourage the use of anaesthetics, making a great many more kinds of operation possible. Understanding of infection and the importance of antiseptic procedures in surgery were only gradually accepted at Barts, but once adopted did a great deal to reduce patient mortality.

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first English woman doctor. She qualified as a doctor in the USA and in 1850 Sir James Paget promoted her admission to the Medical School of St Bartholomew's Hospital. However, after her departure from the Hospital to practice medicine in New York, the admission of women was resisted and they continued to be excluded from Barts until 1947.

Elizabeth Garret-Anderson became the first woman doctor to qualify in Britain in 1865. While training at The London Hospital she suggested that its medical college should admit women in 1878.

After training at The London, Down became assistant physician in 1859. He was also medical superintendent at Earlswood Asylum in 1868 and he and his wife Mary opened a pioneering facility for the learning disabled at their home in Normansfield, Middlesex. Down’s syndrome is named after him.

James Paget studied at Barts and while still a student discovered the cause of trichinosis. He became one of the greatest surgeons and teachers of the Victorian age, influencing many pupils. Two diseases (a disorder of the skeleton and a disease of the nipple) are named after him and he is one of the founders of modern pathology. He became first warden of the residential Medical School in 1843 and full surgeon to the Hospital in 1861. He is one of the most distinguished figures in the history of Barts.

Hughlings-Jackson, who did part of his training at Barts, came to The London in 1863. Over the next 30 years he organised and laid the foundation of modern neurology, becoming the greatest neurologist of his time. His name will always be associated with the form of epilepsy caused by a localized cortical disorder, but his contributions were both more general and more fundamental. He established a world renown tradition of neurology at The London.

Eva Luckes trained at the Middlesex and Westminster hospitals, where she learned nursing based on Florence Nightingale's ideas. She was appointed Matron of the London Hospital in 1880, aged only 26. She persuaded the hospital that more and better nurses were required and introduced theoretical training, giving lectures herself (published as General Nursing). 'Paying Probationers', (student nurses) from wealthier families, came to do short courses and a Private Nursing Institution (1885), Preliminary Training School (1895) and Midwifery School (1903) were opened. Her critics complained of the long hours and heavy responsibilities she expected from probationers. They disliked her two (rather than three) year training course and her opposition to nurse registration. Her achievements were undeniable, however, and she trained nurses who taught others all over the world.

Ethel Manson was Matron to Barts School of Nursing between 1881-1887 and extended significantly the training period for nurses.

As Mrs Bedford Fenwick (following marriage) she became famous for her campaigning for the state registration of nurses, achieving this aim by the Nurses Registration Act 1919, and being appointed state registered nurse no.1. She is regarded as a great founder of professional nursing, who spoke of some needs and developments half a century ahead of her time.

Sir Henry Butlin was surgeon to Barts from 1892 to 1902.  He became one of the pioneers of medical surgery for cancers, being an authority on carcinoma and sarcoma, and proposed that radium treatment would be of great benefit in cases of breast cancer years before it was widely used. 'Butlin's gag' was used to excise primary lesions of the tongue. As Hunterian Professor he lectured on Chimney Sweeps' Cancer and he fostered a fuller relationship between the Hospital and the University of London. He would never leave the operating theatre until the list of cases was finished. His surgery was bold and he undertook complicated and extensive operations to the extent that it might be said he was one of the pioneers of the medical cure for cancer by its removal.

Famous as the founder of the use of antiseptics in surgery, continuing Louis Pasteur’s research on air-borne organisms, while professor of surgery at Glasgow. He realised that some organisms could cause post-operative wound infections such as tetanus, blood-poisoning, and gangrene and countered this by using lint soaked in carbolic acid around the wound and replaced silk stitching with cat-gut ligatures which absorbed the carbolic acid more easily. In 1896 he became consulting surgeon to The London Chest Hospital.

The London was one of the first hospitals to make use of the X-rays in diagnosis and treatment. The first clinical x-ray made at the hospital was taken in March 1896, just a few months after Wilhem Roentgen had fist announced his discovery of the rays.

Radiotherapy was first used to treat cancer at the hospital in 1900. Sadly four pioneer radiographers, Ernest Harnack, Harold Suggars, Ernest Wilson and Reginald Blackall, lost their health through radiation injuries at a time when the potential hazards of X-ray work were not fully appreciated. Harnack developed new X-ray equipment, including safety devices and helped establish the College of Radiographers.

Head, who became assistant physician at The London in 1896, achieved world-wide fame through his researches in neurology, particularly sensation, on which he published a series of papers commencing in 1893.

The famous experiment on his own nerves, studying the loss and restoration of sensation was in collaboration with W H R Rivers and James Sherren.  Head shared fruitful research with George Riddoch on patients with nerve injuries and nervous disorders during the First World War and did important work on aphasia and similar disorders of speech (1926).

Bulloch came to The London from the Lister Institute and had previously worked under Robert Koch in Germany. He was a friend of Paul Ehrlich, the French researcher, and as a result The London was the first hospital in the country in which the drug salvarsan was used to treat syphilis, marking a new era of therapeutic success in treating bacterial diseases.

The high public esteem in which ‘Freddie’ Treves was held, helped to keep The London in the public eye in the Edwardian era. After qualifying from The London he became assistant surgeon at 26. Advances had become possible in surgery of the abdomen, including an understanding of the true nature of appendicitis. Treves made an important contribution by advocating surgical treatment for appendicitis.

In 1902 he became famous when he successfully operated on the appendix of King Edward VII, two days before the date fixed for his coronation. Treves was an eminent anatomist, surgeon, teacher, writer and friend of royalty.

In the last of the many books he wrote, he gave his account to the general public of the Elephant Man. Many years previously Treves had befriended the deformed Joseph Merrick, and had persuaded the hospital authorities to make an exception to the rules, so that a permanent refuge could be provided in a room in the East Wing.

Sir Archibald Garrod is regarded as one of the first physicians to appreciate the importance of biochemistry in medicine. Joining Barts in 1904 he was physician at the hospital from 1912-1920. He became first director of the Hospital’s Medical Clinic and also became Professor of Medicine in the University of London in 1920. In the same year he left the hospital to accept the Regius Chair of Medicine in the University of Oxford. He undertook research on rheumatism, urinary tracts and metabolic diseases.

The London’s Cardiac Department was one of the first such departments in Europe when it was founded in 1911. James Mackenzie had already achieved world-wide fame through his work on cardiology, based on observations in his general practice in Lancashire, when he was persuaded to become its first director.

Sir Thomas Dunhill was Assistant Director of the Surgical Professorial Unit at Barts, 1920-1931. He had become notable in Australia for thyroid surgery and was the first to advocate extensive thyroidectomy for toxic goitre. Joining Barts' Surgical Unit in 1920 his surgical fame spread throughout the country. His interest in thyroid disease caught the imagination of the surgical world. He gave the Arris and Gale lecture in 1931 on 'Carcinoma of the Thyroid' and his life interest in thyrotoxicosis was the subject of his last lectures. He made other important contributions to surgery in the field of gastric, duodenal and biliary disease and gave the Arris and Gale lecture in 1934 and 1939 on diaphragmatic hernia. He became successively surgeon, sergeant-surgeon and extra surgeon to Kings George V and VI. His achievements and eminence were won at the cost of intense mental effort and worry but his personality commanded respect and it was widely seen that he had complete intellectual integrity.

In spite of financial difficulties, the 1920s saw progress in medical research and therapeutics. Otto Leyton, Head of the Medical Research Unit at The London, proposed a national blood transfusion service, during the First World War and this was instituted by the British Red Cross in 1926. Insulin therapy for diabetes, first used in 1921 in Canada, was also piloted by Dr Leyton and his medical unit colleagues in the mid 1920s.

Lord Horder was one of the first clinicians to appreciate the diagnostic help the laboratory could provide and was known as “the man who brought the laboratory to the bedside”. He was physician at Barts from 1921 to 1935; was a recognised authority on bacterial endocarditis; influenced many students; and was widely regarded as the outstanding clinician in Britain of his day. He became extra physician to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II.

In 1925 at The London, Souttar became the first surgeon to open a chamber of the heart, the left auricle, in order to stretch the mitral valve. This operation did not become the standard procedure for treatment of severe mitral stenosis, a common complication of rheumatic fever, for another twenty years. Souttar also pioneered the surgical use of radium after meeting with Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris.

Cairns achieved his ambition to be the first head of the new neurosurgical unit at The London, after returning from a year in the world leading neurosurgical unit, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, USA. He went on to become one of the pioneers of modern neurosurgery in Britain and established a reputation for excellence in the field maintained by Douglas Northfield and his successors.

Sir Geoffrey Keynes was the younger brother of the celebrated economist, John Maynard Keynes. He combined his surgeon’s career at Barts with the publication of editions and bibliographies - such as those of the poet, John Donne, and the scientist Robert Hooke - much respected by the bibliographic and literary worlds. He was full surgeon at the Hospital between 1946 and 1949 and had earlier developed important ideas on the treatment of breast cancer by local removal and radium implantation.  He also did much to develop an effective blood transfusion service and to advance surgical treatment of thyroid disease. During World War II he was senior consultant surgeon to the Royal Air Force. His own library is now in the Library of the University of Cambridge.

The London Chest hospital became one of the pioneers in the investigation and treatment of coronary artery disease. The hospital helped pioneer, in Britain, the use of heart/lung by-pass machinery in open heart surgery. It has been in the forefront of the development of the coronary artery by-pass surgery, which now forms such an important part of its activity.