OBITUARY. 



JOHN WHITAKER HULKE. 

 Born 1830. Died February 19, 1895. 



THIS eminent surgeon and oculist, and equally distinguished 

 palaeozoologist, was born at Deal, and was the elder son of the 

 successful surgeon, the medical attendant of the great Duke of 

 Wellington. His ancestors, the Hulchers, left the Low Countries 

 during the Alva persecutions of the 16th century. Hulke was 

 educated at King's College School, spent a couple of years in 

 Germany, and then entered the King's College Medical School in 

 1849. 1855 found him at the Crimea, where he was attached to the 

 general hospital before Sebastopol. He became a Fellow of the 

 Royal College of Surgeons, and assistant surgeon to the Royal 

 Ophthalmic Hospital, Moorfields, in 1857, and in 1862 commenced 

 his long career as surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, of which place 

 he was senior surgeon when he died. It is supposed that his death 

 resulted from a chill taken while attending to a patient at the latter 

 Hospital, his strong sense of duty taking him there at an early hour 

 in the morning to attend a case of strangulated hernia. Hulke 

 became connected with the Royal College of Surgeons in 1880, when 

 he was attached to the Board of Examiners. In 1881 he became a 

 member of Council; in 1888, Vice-President; and in 1893, President. 

 He was President of the Pathological Society in 1883, and at the 

 same time held the same office at the Geological Society. In 1893 he 

 became President of the Clinical Society. He was to have delivered 

 the Hunterian Oration at the College of Surgeons on February 14 

 last ; this oration, which was never delivered, and which was 

 probably the last manuscript Mr. Hulke ever penned, is to be found 

 in the British Medical Journal for February 23, the journal to which 

 we are indebted for the above particulars, extracted from a 

 sympathetic and appreciative obituary notice. 



Of Mr. Hulke's services to palaeozoology it is impossible to 

 speak too highly. Exact and cautious, his work was sound and 

 reliable ; he was never in a hurry to publish his papers, and did not 

 indulge in the fanciful reproductions on insufficient evidence so 

 common with others working in the same field. His first palaeo- 

 zoological paper was published in 1869, and dealt with a saurian 

 humerus from the Kimeridge Clay of Dorset. In the same year 



