Charles Scott Sherrington

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Charles Scott Sherrington : biography

27 November 1857 – 4 March 1952
The Assaying of Brabantius and other Verse
A collection of previously published war-time poems. This was Sherrington’s first major poetic release. The Assaying was published in 1925. Sherrington’s poetic side was inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Sherrington was fond of Goethe the poet, but not Goethe the scientist. Speaking of Goethe’s scientific writings, Sherrington said "to appraise them is not a congenial task."
Mammalian Physiology: a Course of Practical Exercises
The textbook was released in 1919 at the first possible moment after Sherrington’s coming to Oxford and the end of the War.

Biography

Early years and education

Charles Scott Sherrington was born in Islington, London, England, on 27 November 1857. Although official biographies claimed that he was the son of James Norton Sherrington, a country doctor, and his wife Anne Brookes, née Thurtell, Charles and his brothers, William and George, were in fact almost certainly the illegitimate sons of Anne Brookes Sherrington and Caleb Rose, an eminent Ipswich surgeon. Caleb’s father, Caleb Burrell Rose, was indeed a country doctor (in Swaffham, Norfolk) and was also a well-known amateur geologist who published the first geological study of Norfolk. James Norton Sherrington, Anne Thurtell’s first husband, was an ironmonger and artist’s colourman in Great Yarmouth, not a doctor, and died in Yarmouth in 1848, nearly 9 years before Charles was born.GRO index: 1848 Dec, Yarmouth 13, 258Will of James Norton Sherrington, proved at London 5 March 1849, National Archives Catalogue Reference:Prob 11/2090, image 171 The births of the three Sherrington boys do not appear to have been officially registered. They were all baptised on 17 July 1863 in the parish church of St James, Clerkenwell.Baptisms solemnized in the Parish of St James Clerkenwell, in the County of Middlesex in the Year 1863, p. 558, nos 5826, 5827 & 5828 (on line at ancestry.co.uk) No father’s name is supplied, and their mother’s address is given as 14 College Terrace, Islington. In the 1861 census the occupants of this house were listed as Anne Sherrington (widow), Charles Scott (boarder, 4, born India), William Stainton (boarder, 2, born Liverpool), Caleb Rose (visitor, married, surgeon) and his 11-year-old son Edward Rose, who was also described as a boarder. During the 1860s the whole family moved to Anglesea Road, Ipswich, reputedly because London exacerbated Caleb Rose’s tendency to asthma, and appeared in the census there in 1871, but Caleb and Anne were not actually married until the last quarter of 1880,GRO index: 1880 Dec, Ipswich 4a, 1377 following the death of Caleb’s first wife, Isabella, in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 1 October 1880.Death certificate: 1880 Deaths in the District of St George in the City of Edinburgh, page 362, no. 1086

Caleb Rose was noteworthy as both a classical scholar and an archaeologist. At the family’s Edgehill House in Ipswich one could find a fine selection of paintings, books, and geological specimens. Through Rose’s interest in the English artists of the Norwich School, Sherrington gained a love of art. Intellectuals frequented the house regularly. It was this environment that fostered Sherrington’s academic sense of wonder. Even before matriculation, the young Sherrington had read Johannes Müller’s Elements of Physiology. The book was given to him by Caleb Rose.

Sherrington entered Ipswich School in 1871. Thomas Ashe, a famous English poet, worked at the school. Ashe served as an inspiration to Sherrington, the former instilling a love of classics and a desire to travel in the latter.

Rose had pushed Sherrington towards medicine. Sherrington first began to study with the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He also sought to study at Cambridge, but a bank failure had devastated the family’s finances. Sherrington elected to enroll at St Thomas’ Hospital in September 1876 as a "perpetual pupil". He did so in order to allow his two younger brothers to do so ahead of him. The two studied law there. Medical studies at St. Thomas’s Hospital were intertwined with studies at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Physiology was Sherrington’s chosen major at Cambridge. There, he studied under the "father of British physiology," Sir Michael Foster.