Dr Ralph Terence ST JOHN-BROOKS [20930]

  General Notes:

Ralph was a bacteriologist

A marriage will take place next month between Ralph St John Brooks MB youngest son of the late Dr Henry St John Brooks, MD, formerly University Anatomist, Dublin University, and Julia Gordon hope, daughter of Mr and Mrs William Hope, of Washington, USA.
Ref: Globe 26 April 1912

Ralph Terence St . John-Brooks
Residence Date: 1925
Residence Place: Rose Cottage, Carshalton, Surrey
Notes: Tel. Sutton 751
Directory: The Medical Directory
ST. JOHN-BROOKS, Ralph Terence, Rose Cottage, Carshalton, Surrey (Tel. Sutton 751)'97B.A. Dub. (1st of 1st Hnrs.& Prize Nat. Sc.) 1908, M.A., M.D. 1912,M. B., B. Ch., B.A.U. 1909, D.P.H. 1910; D.T.M. & Hy. Comb. 1911 ; L.M. Rot. Hosp. Dub. 1909 ; (T.C. Dub.); B.M.A. Research Schol. 1912-13 ; Houghton Medal & Prize Med. & Surg. Sir P. Dun's Hosp. ; Curat. Nat. Collec. of Type Cultures of Bacteria & Protozoa (Med. Research Counc.) Lister Inst. ; Capt. late R.A.M.C.; Mem. Path. Soc. Gt. Brit. & Irel., Brit. Mycological Soc. & Econom. Biol. ; Special San. Investigator Govt. Wind-ward & Leeward IslandS, 1913-14 ; Sec. & Investig. Comm. Plague Investig. in India, 1914-15 ; Specialist in Bacteriol. R.A.M. Coll. Millbank, 1919-20. Author, " Effects of Dosage in Typhoid Vaccination" (with J. H. Smith), J1. Hyg. 1912 ; " Opsonic Index in Plague Vac-cination," lb.; "Influence of the Medium on which the Plague Bacillus is propagated upon the facility with which it is ingested by human leucocytes," lb. 1914 ; " The Influence of Saturation Deficiency & of Temperature on the Course of Epidemic Plague," lb. 1917 ; " The Organisms of the Fowl Typhoid Group " (with M. Rhodes), Jl. Path. .4- Batt. 1923.

The Nomenclature Committee for the International Society for Microbiology 1930.
To be constituted as follows:
Two permanent secretaries shall be elected: one primarily to represent medical and veterinary bacteriology, the other primarily to represent the other phases of bacteriology. The following individuals are hereby appointed secretaries:
. . . . .To represent primarily medical and veterinary bacteriology Dr. Ralph St. John-Brooks, Lister Institute, London, England.

His address in 1958 was:
ST. JOHN-BROOKS, Dr. Ralph - 15 Wilton Court, Wilton Place, Dublin, Eire.

Obituary
RALPH TERENCE ST. JOHN-BROOKS M.D., Hon. D.Sc. Dubl., D.P.H., D.T.M. & H.
Dr. R. T. St. John-Brooks, formerly curator of the National Collection of Type Cultures, died in Dublin on April 29 at the age of 78. His father was Prof. Henry St. John-Brooks, university anatomist in the University of Dublin, and he was educated in Dublin at Erasmus Smithâ School and Trinity College. After qualifying in 1909 he took the D.P.H. and the D.T.M. & H., and in 1911 he was appointed a special bacteriological investigator to the Local Government Board. He spent two years as a special sanitary investigator for the Governments of the Windward and Leeward Islands. In 1914 he became secretary of the Commission for Plague Investigation in India, During the 1914-18 war he was specialist in bacteriology at the County of London War Hospital at Epsom and, from 1919 to 1920, to the Royal Army Medical College at Millbank. In 1920 he was appointed curator of the National Collection, and he held this post until he retired in 1946. S. T. C. writes: " An Irishman of renown, St. John-Brooks was first an internationalist and second a bacteriologist. He attended the first International Congress for Microbiology in 1930, and he was appointed the secretary to represent medical bacteriology in the new Nomenclature Committee. At the second congress, held in London in 1936, he became secretary general of the International Association of Microbiologists, a post he held until 1953. " St. John-Brooks was a visionary; he conceived the idea of a great international centre which would be able to locate cultures in any permanent collection or in any specialised laboratory. He was persuasive, and his search for funds was so successful that the Lausanne Centre was established. It was not his fault that the centre was not the success expected of it, and he later moved to Washington to carry on his international work from the office of the Type Culture Collection. " At home, he was known as the first curator of the National Collection of Type Cultures, then at the Lister Institute. He published little during this period, but posterity will always know the name of his chow-chow puppy Rex, which must have had innumerable bacterial infections, the causes of which were officially deposited in the collection by the Curator himself. " St. John-Brooks worked quietly and managed to persuade independently minded people to bind themselves together to form the Society for General Microbiology, for which he always had a great interest and of which he became the first honorary member. His great joy in the later years of his life was the honorary Sc.D. conferred on him by Trinity College, Dublin. He returned to Ireland in the fifties and lived quietly near Dublin. His health was not good and he did not visit his friends in England, and he was unknown to the younger bacteriologists. " With his friends Robert Breed and R. E. Buchanan, he kept alive the organisation of the Nomenclature Committee when the viability of the International Association of Micro- biologists was in doubt. He will be remembered by his friends all over the world, not only as Ireland's outstanding bacteriologist, but also as a man to whom one never turned in vain." In 1912 Dr. St. John-Brooks married Julia Margaret Gordon, and there were two sons and a daughter of the marriage.
Ref: doclide.net

Ralph married Julia Margaret GORDON [21375] [MRIN: 4886] in 1912.