Joseph Sampson Gamgee

‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’: Letters from the anaesthetist Joseph Thomas Clover to the Birmingham surgeon Joseph Sampson Gamgee

“…[1][2][3] Joseph Sampson Gamgee ( Figure 2) was a bold and innovative surgeon in Birmingham from 1857 until an illness led to his retirement in 1881; he is remembered particularly for the gauze and cotton wool surgical dressing known as Gamgee tissue and his role in the establishment of the Hospital Saturday Fund in Birmingham. 4,5 That is how their lives concluded, as great men, leaders in their fields, venerated by their peers. But once they were young, uncertain of their future and good friends.…”