British Sir James Paget (1814-1899) was not only a gifted surgeon and pathologist, but also a brilliant orator and scientist. His medical practice, founded in 1852, was so successful that after a short time he became personal surgeon to Queen Victoria and, a few years later, to the Prince of Wales.
Genius thinker
Paget’s fame is also based on his description of numerous medical conditions – including not only Paget’s disease of the bone, but also Paget’s disease of the breast (a particular form of cancer of the mammary gland ducts on the nipple) and Paget-Schrötter syndrome, a thrombosis of the axillary vein. Paget – along with German pathologist Rudolf Virchow – is considered the founder of modern pathology.
Dazzling personality
In addition to Virchow, he had numerous other famous friends, including French chemist and bacteriologist Louis Pasteur, nurse and social reformer Florence Nightingale, British zoologist Thomas Henry Huxley, and Charles Darwin, the founder of the modern theory of evolution.
