Robert William Smith (surgeon)
Robert William Smith MD FRCSI MRIA was an Irish surgeon and pathologist who described Smith's fracture in his 1847 book, the first important book on fractures by an Irish author.Biography
Smith studied medicine in his native Dublin and he was apprenticed to Richard Carmichael, and he studied professionally in the RCSI Medical School, Trinity College, the Richmond Hospital Schools, and in the House of Industry Hospitals. Smith received his Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1832. He was awarded his MD from Trinity College, Dublin in 1842, and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1844. He became the first Professor of Surgery at Trinity College in 1847, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1849. He worked as surgeon to the Hospital for the Mentally Ill, Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital and he taught surgery and forensic medicine at the Richmond Hospital. He co-founded the Dublin Pathological Society in 1838 with Abraham Colles, Sir Dominic Corrigan and William Stokes.
Robert Smith published on a wide variety of subjects, particularly the pathology of surgical diseases, congenital joint dislocations and neuroma. Cameron in his History of the RCSI claims that Smith was one of the most distinguished anatomists and surgeons of his time. In his 1847 book he corrected Colles's description of the Colles' fracture, stating that
Smith also described his own eponymous fracture in the same chapter. In his Treatise on the Pathology, Diagnosis and Treatment of Neuroma he described neurofibromatosis 33 years before von Recklinghausen.
Robert William Smith died on 28 October 1873. He was Vice-President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland at the time.
