Text in German and English; Sir W. R. Gowers was responsible for the English translation. Digital facsimile from the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek at this link.

Gowers’s important account of the changes in the retinal vessels in Bright’s disease is reproduced in Willius & Keys, Cardiac classics, 1941, pp. 605-11.

Gowers introduced the colorimetric method of estimating hemoglobin and devised a hemoglobinometer for the purpose. This was modified by Haldane (see No. 891). Previously Hoppe-Seyler had used a hematinometer.

Gowers demonstrated the dorsal spinocerebellar tract, “Gowers’s tract”, and introduced the terms myotatic and knee-jerk, which he elicited with the rubber edge of his stethoscope or a percussion hammer.

Gowers left a classic account of epilepsy, a book which today is still one of the most important on the subject. He was first to note the tetanic nature of the epileptic convulsion.

Gowers was physician and Professor of Clinical Medicine at University College, London. He especially distinguished himself in the field of neurology, and the above set is his greatest work.Page 365 of vol. 1 includes the first description of local panatrophy. See also Rev. Neurol. Psychiat. (Edinb.), 1903, 1, 3-4. Gowers was also interested in stenography, advised his students to take down his lectures in shorthand, and founded the Society of Medical Phonographers. See No. 4751. Biography by Macdonald Critchley, London, 1949.

Horsley was the founder of neurosurgery in England. The above paper records the first successful operation for the removal of an extramedullary tumor of the spinal cord.

“Distal myopathy of Gowers”, a form of progressive muscular dystrophy.