Bernard Connor (1666–1698)

Heberden Historical Series/Series Editor: M. Jayson

M. T. Pugh

Department of Rheumatology, Birmingham Heartlands and Solihull NHS Trust (Teaching), Bordesley Green East, Birmingham B9 5SS, UK

Although little is known about the first 26 yr of life of this Irish physician, they must have been influential, as in the remainder of his short life he was to publish what is believed to be the earliest account of ankylosing spondylitis, travel widely across Europe meeting many of the greatest medical minds of the time, serve as physician to the King of Poland, be feted by the medical societies of England and France and write an infamous book calling into question the religious basis of miraculous cures, before dying of what was probably malaria in London at the age of 32 yr.

Bernard O’Connor, he was later to drop the ‘O’, was born in Kerry around 1666. As a Catholic, at that time, a formal education would have been difficult to obtain, although it is possible that a local Dean of the Church of Ireland educated him. By whatever means he attained a sufficient education to attain entry to the university at Montpellier and then the medical school at Rheims, where he obtained a Doctor of Physic in 1693. This was a time of great advancement in medicine under the principles of the scientific method. William Harvey had described the motions of the heart in 1628, Marcello Malpighi discovered capillaries in 1661 and Leuwenhoek had described for the first time red blood cells in 1668. Dr O'Connor was influenced by these scientific and philosophical forces and was noted for his open willingness to question orthodoxy in the light of the new knowledge [1].

After a short period of practice in Paris, Bernard O'Connor commenced a tour of Europe in the company of the Chancellor of Poland, as tutor to his two sons. A circuitous route took him to Italy, Sicily, Germany, Austria, Moravia, Silesia and eventually to Warsaw. During his travels he had the occasion to meet many of the greatest medial luminaries of the period. He also treated members of the English aristocracy on ‘The Grand Tour’ and thereby established a reputation, which probably led him to be offered the post of Physician to King John the Third of Poland. His medical reputation at the court was enhanced when against the opinion of 10 local physicians he declared that the King's sister had a fatal liver abscess from which she duely died 1 month later, her diagnosis confirmed at autopsy. However, he antagonized the clergy with his forthright views on the soul and death, and against this background, O'Connor left Poland escorting the King's only daughter to Belgium in 1694, before arriving in England in 1695.

In the same year, a letter written in 1693 was published in Paris describing a completely fused spine which he believed came from a church grave yard or charnel house due to its dry condition and red discolouration. Of the spine O'Connor noted it ‘was as easy to break one of the vertebrae into two as to disjoint or separate it from the other vertebrae’. He also noted that the iliac bones were fused to the sacrum and there was fusion of the costovertebral joints (Fig. 1Go). The description even speculated on the likely effect on the life of the sufferer. The same year his book Dissertationes Medico-physicae was published in Oxford, containing a Latin description of the case. During this time he was lecturing on the scientific discoveries of those he had met on his passage across Europe at Oxford, Cambridge and London. The then Archbishop of Canterbury donated his library space to O'Connor to conduct physical and anatomical experiments ‘to serve the public’.



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FIG. 1.  A case of ankylosing spondylitis from the 17th century.

 
Favour with the Church did not last long, as in 1697 he published a book Evangelium Medici which caused sensation and outrage as it suggested that miracles in the Gospel could be explained by naturally occurring phenomena [2]. The Church of England, worried by the contents of the book, tried to limit its distribution. Of the episode O'Connor remarked ‘I am resolv'd not to meddle any more with Matters of this kind, but to apply myself entirely to the Practice of Physik’. The work involved in the preparation of Evangelium Medici prevented him from finishing what was to be his final publication, A History of Poland, which was completed by a friend and published in 1698. Bernard Connor did not get the opportunity to dedicate his life to medicine for much longer as he developed a febrile illness from which he died in St Giles in the Fields in London on 30 October 1698.

References

  1. Knott J, Bernard Connor. A forgotten medical exile and scientific pioneer of the seventeenth century (1666–1698). Dublin Med J1907;CXXIII:57–144.
  2. Coakley D, Bernard Connor. A European reputation in Irish masters of medicine. Dublin: Town House, 1992:15–25.




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