Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/111

 practice, and his professional and social position alike made him the virtual head of the medical profession of Dublin and Ireland. Papers which he wrote in his younger days gave a promise of valuable scientific work, which he failed to fulfil. But his article on 'Typhus Fever' in Quain's 'Dictionary of Medicine' (1882) was long regarded as an authority. He was recognised as an expert in mental disease, and he so effectually urged the importance of psychological study for medical students and physicians, that to his influence may be partly assigned the inclusion of mental disease in the medical curriculum. In 1868 he published (Dublin Journal of Medical Science, vol. xxxi.) a note on the writ 'De Lunatico Inquirendo' in the case of Dean Swift, which had fallen into his hands.

Banks was always interested in medical education. He represented from 1880 to 1898 at first the Queen's University and then the new Royal University (of both of which he was a senator) on the General Medical Council, where he pleaded for a high standard of general preliminary education. He urged the lengthening of the medical curriculum from four to five years, and he added a medal and a second prize to the medical travelling prize in the school of physic, Trinity College. Banks' s culture, old-fashioned courtesy, and handsome person gave him a high place in social life, and his social engagements probably impaired his devotion to scientific research. He numbered among his friends the leading professional men of Dublin. He was a polished and convincing speaker, an admirable talker, and a writer of clear, scholarly English. In 1883 Banks declined the offer of a knighthood (cf. comment in Punch, 28 July 1883), but in 1889 he accepted the honour of K.C.B. He was made hon. D.Sc. of the Royal University (1882) and hon. LL.D. of Glasgow (1888). Connected by marriage and property with the co. Monaghan, he was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant of that county, and served as high sheriff in 1891. Banks, whose eye-sight failed in later life without impairing his social activity, died on 16 July 1908 at his residence, 45 Merrion Square, Dublin, and was buried in Mount Jerome cemetery, Dublin.

Banks married in 1848 Alice (d. 1899), youngest daughter of Captain Wood Wright of Golagh, co. Monaghan. Their only child, Mary, in 1873 married the Hon. Willoughby Burrell, son of the fourth Baron Gwydyr, and died in 1898, leaving an only surviving child, Catharine Mary Sermonda, wife of John Henniker Heaton the younger.

A portrait by Miss Sara Purser, Hon. R.H.A., painted in 1888, hangs in the Royal College of Physicians, having been presented to the college by the Dublin branch of the British Medical Association. A portrait medal was engraved by Mr. Oliver Sheppard, R.H.A., in 1906 for award to the winner of the travelling medical prize at Trinity, and a medallion from the same design is in the medical school of Trinity College.

 BANKS, WILLIAM MITCHELL (1842–1904), surgeon, born at Edinburgh on 1 Nov. 1842, was son of Peter S. Banks, writer to the signet. He received his early education at the Edinburgh Academy, whence he passed to the university. After a brilliant career in medicine he graduated M.D. with honours and the gold medal for his thesis on the Wolffian bodies (1864). During his university career he acted as prosector to Professor John Goodsir [q. v.]. Whilst at the Infirmary he acted as dresser and as house surgeon to James Syme [q. v.]. After graduating he was demonstrator of anatomy for a short time to Professor Allen Thomson [q. v.] at the University of Glasgow. Afterwards he went to Paraguay, where he acted as surgeon to the Republican government He settled at Liverpool in 1868 as assistant to Mr. E. R. Bickersteth in succession to Reginald Harrison [q. v. Suppl. II], and joined the staff of the Infirmary school of medicine, first as demonstrator and afterwards as lecturer on anatomy. This post he retained, with the title of professor, when the Infirmary school was merged in University College. He resigned the chair in 1894, when he became emeritus professor of anatomy.

Meanwhile, having served the offices of pathologist and curator of the museum, he succeeded Reginald Harrison as assistant surgeon to the Royal Infirmary at Liverpool in 1875, and was full surgeon from 1877 till November 1902, when, on being appointed consulting surgeon, the committee paid him the unique compliment of assigning him ten beds in his former wards.

Banks was admitted F.R.C.S. England on 9 Dec. 1869 without having taken the examinations for the diploma of member. He served as a member of the council 