Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes (/ˈkeɪnz/KAYNZ; 25 March 1887, Cambridge – 5 July 1982, Cambridge) was a British surgeon and author.[2] He began his career as a physician in World War I, before becoming a doctor at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, where he made notable innovations in the fields of blood transfusion and breast cancer surgery. Keynes was also a publishing scholar and bibliographer of English literature and English medical history, focusing primarily on William Blake and William Harvey.
Keynes delayed his medical education in order to serve in World War I, where he served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps and then worked as a consultant surgeon, becoming an expert in blood transfusion.[3] His experience in the First World War led him to publish Blood Transfusion, the first book on the subject written by a British author.[6] Keynes also founded the London Blood Transfusion Service with P. L. Oliver.[5]Alexander Bogdanov acquired a copy of this book whilst visiting London to negotiate the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement in 1922. Bogdanov went on to found the Institute for Haematology and Blood Transfusions in Moscow.[7]
Keynes was deeply affected by the brutality and gore that he witnessed in the field, which may have influenced his dislike for radical surgery later in his career.
Keynes began working full-time at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, where he worked under George Gask and Sir Thomas Dunhill, after returning from World War I.[9] Keynes used his influence as an assistant surgeon to advocate for limited surgery instead of the invasive radical mastectomy. Frustrated with the mortality rate and gruesomeness of the radical mastectomy, Keynes experimented by inserting 50 milligrams of radium in a patient's tumour.[10] He later observed that, "The ulcer rapidly healed ... and the whole mass became smaller, softer and less fixed."[11]
Keynes pursued his new idea through a number of trials, observing the effectiveness of injecting radium chloride into breast cancer tumours compared with the effectiveness of the radical mastectomy.[12] The promising results of these trials led Keynes to be cautiously optimistic, writing in 1927 that the "extension of [an] operation beyond a local removal might sometimes be unnecessary."[11] Keynes' outlook was considered a radical break from the medical consensus at the time. Keynes wrote in his autobiography that his work with radium "was regarded with some interest by American surgeons," but that the concept of a limited mastectomy failed to gain significant traction in the medical community at the time.[10][13] His doubts regarding the radical mastectomy were vindicated some 50 years later, when innovators like Bernard Fisher and others revisited his data and pursued what became known as a lumpectomy.[10] Limited surgeries, like the lumpectomy, accompanied by radiation are now the standard treatment for breast cancer.[10]
Keynes was also a pioneer in the treatment of myasthenia gravis.[14] Much like with breast cancer, the medical community knew little about how to treat the disease at the time. Keynes pioneered the removal of the thymus gland, which is now the standard treatment for myasthenia gravis.[14]
In 1955 Keynes received a knighthood for services to medicine.[15]
His autobiographyThe Gates of Memory was published in 1981, and he died the following year, aged 95. The Gates of Memory includes anecdotes of Keynes' numerous run-ins and friendships with other famous public figures. For example, Keynes often went climbing with George Mallory, the renowned British mountaineer; he also once performed life-saving treatment on Virginia Woolf after the budding author overdosed on pills.[15][13]
Personal life
On 12 May 1917 Keynes married Margaret Elizabeth Darwin, the daughter of Sir George Howard Darwin and granddaughter of Charles Darwin. They had one daughter, who died in infancy, and four sons:
Keynes dedicated his life to his work and was also sociable with many friends. He took pride in never having been drunk, and was known by most as an affable, well-mannered man.[2]
Legacy
Keynes' contributions profoundly influenced the fields of surgery and English literature. He pioneered limited breast cancer surgery accompanied by radiation, a strategy that has endured the test of time. His work on William Blake "was instrumental in establishing Blake as a central figure in the history of English art and literature."[6]
Selected Essays of William Hazlitt 1778 : 1830 (Nonesuch Press, 1930)
The Works of Sir Thomas Browne (Faber & Gwyer / Faber & Faber 1928-1931 [6 volumes], 1964 [4 volumes])
The Note-Book of William Blake (Nonesuch Press, 1935)
John Evelyn: a Study in Bibliophily & a Bibliography of his Writings (Cambridge, 1937)
Blake (Faber and Faber, 1945) (The Faber Gallery series)
The Poetical Works of Rupert Brooke (Faber & Faber, 1946)
William Blake, 1757–1827 (Paris: British Council and Galerie René Drouin, 1947)
Poetry and Prose of William Blake (Nonesuch Press, 1948)
The Portraiture of William Harvey (Royal College of Surgeons, 1949) (The Thomas Vicary Lecture 1948)
The Personality of William Harvey (Cambridge University Press: 1949)
William Blake's Engravings, edited with an introduction (Faber and Faber, 1950)
The Tempera Paintings of William Blake (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1951)
The Apologie and Treatise of Ambroise Containing the Voyages Made into Divers Places with Many of His Writings Upon Surgery (1951)
Samuel Butler's Notebooks (London: Cape, 1951; New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1951) with Brian Hill
Poems of Rupert Brooke (1954)
A Bibliography of Rupert Brooke (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954) (The Soho Bibliographies, No. 4)[18]
The Letters of William Blake (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956, 1968)
Harvey Through John Aubrey's Eyes: The Harveian Oration of 1958 (London: Royal College of Physicians, 1958)
A Bibliography of Dr. Robert Hooke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960)
Essays in Biography (London: Mercury Books, 1961)
Dr. Timothie Bright 1550—1615. A Survey of his Life with a Bibliography of his Writings (Wellcome Historial Medical Library, 1962) (Wellcome Historical Medical Library Publications. New Series. No. 1.)
A Bibliography of Siegfried Sassoon (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954) (The Soho Bibliographies, No. 10)[19]
A Study of the Illuminated Books of William Blake: Poet, Printer, Prophet (New York: Orion Press in association with Trianon Press, Paris, 1964)
An Exhibition of the Illuminated Books of William Blake: Poet – Printer – Prophet (Clairraux: Trianon Press, 1964) with Lessing J. Rosenwald
On Editing Blake (Edinburgh University Press, 1964)
Blake (Knowledge Publications in association with Purnell & Sons, 1965) (The Masters, 6)
Blake: Complete Writings with Variant Readings, editor, Oxford University Press, 1966 (UK-Paperback, Revised). ISBN0192810502
William Blake. Songs of Innocence and of Experience, editor, with Introduction and Commentary. (London: Oxford University Press, 1967)
Henry James in Cambridge (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd., 1967)
Sir Thomas Browne, Selected Writings (University of Chicago Press, 1968)
The Letters of Rupert Brooke (London: Faber & Faber, 1968; New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968)
William Blake: Engraver. A Descriptive Catalogue of an Exhibition (Princeton University Press, 1969) with Charles Ryskamp
William Pickering, Publisher: A Memoir and a Check-List of his Publications (revised edition of the 1924 edition; London, Galahad Press, 1969; New York, Burt Franklin, 1969)[20]
Drawings of William Blake: 92 Pencil Studies. Selection, Introduction and Commentary, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1970 ISBN0-486-22303-5
A Bibliography of Sir William Petty F.R.S. and of 'Observations on the Bills of Mortality' by John Graunt F.R.S. Oxford : Clarendon Press (1971)[21]
William Blake's Water-Colours Illustrating the Poems of Thomas Gray (Chicago: J. Philip O'Hara and Paris: Trianon Press, 1972)
Deaths Duell: A Sermon Delivered before King Charles I in the Beginning of Lent 1630/1, by John Donne (Boston: Godine, 1973)
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Oxford University Press, 1975)
A Bibliography of Henry King D.D., Bishop of Chichester (Douglas Cleverdon, 1977)
The Gates of Memory (Oxford University Press, 1981)
A Watch of Nightingales (London: The Stourton Press, 1981) edited with Peter Davidson
References
^Chapter Ii. History.amedd.army.mil. Retrieved on 2014-06-27.
^ abcdSiddhartha., Mukherjee (2010). The emperor of all maladies : a biography of cancer (1st Scribner hardcover ed.). New York: Scribner. ISBN9781439181713. OCLC464593321.