Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/440

  Institute. Medical officer of health for Islington (1871–2), and for St. George's, Hanover Square (1872–1900), Corfield was at one time president of the Society of Medical Officers of Health.

A member of the committee appointed in 1869 by the British Association to inquire into the treatment and utilisation of sewage, Corfield worked as reporter to the committee until 1875, and he became an ardent advocate of land filtration and sewage farms. He delivered at the Royal Society of Arts in 1879 the Cantor lectures on ‘Dwelling houses, their sanitary construction and arrangements’; in 1893 the Harveian lecture before the Harveian Society of London, on ‘Disease and defective house sanitation,’ and in 1902 the Milroy lectures at the Royal College of Physicians of London, ‘On the ætiology of typhoid fever and its prevention’ (1902).

Corfield shares with Rogers Field the honour of being a pioneer in house sanitation and of being the first to enunciate the true principles of a healthy home. Public attention was called to the topic in 1871 by the attack of enteric contracted by the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII) at Londesborough Lodge, Scarborough. Corfield was called upon to make a careful inspection of Lord Londesborough's house. In a letter to ‘The Times’ on 22 Jan. 1872 he pointed out that the disease had not been conveyed by sewer air as had been suggested. For the next thirty years Corfield enjoyed a large consulting practice throughout England in connection with the sanitation of public and private buildings. In 1899 he was the first holder of the newly established office of consulting sanitary adviser to the office of works.

Corfield acted conjointly with Dr. John Netten Radcliffe [q. v.] as secretary of the Epidemiological Society (1870–2), and was president (1902–3). President of the public health section of the British Medical Association held at Bristol in 1894, and of a section of the sanitary congress of the Sanitary Institute held at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1896, Corfield originated the successful International Congress of Hygiene held in London in 1891. He represented the office of works at the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, of which he was honorary president, at Paris in 1900; and presided at the conference held by the Sanitary Institute at Paris in August 1900 under the auspices of the Société Française d'Hygiène.

Corfield died at Marstrand in Sweden, on a visit for his health, on 26 Aug. 1903. He married in 1876 Emily Madelina, youngest daughter of John Pike, F.S.A., and left a family of six children, two of whom are carrying on his work, one, Dr. Walter Francis Corfield, as medical officer of health for Colchester, the other, Frederick John Arthur Corfield, as a sanitary adviser.

Corfield belongs to the second generation of sanitary reformers in England. Entering professional life after a first-rate general education, he took up the subject of public health where it had been left by Chadwick, Simon, Buchanan, Netten Radcliffe, Thorne-Thorne and others, and carried it forward until it became a highly specialised science.

Corfield, who had wide interests outside his profession, was a collector of rare books and a connoisseur in binding. His library was especially rich in works on fishing, for he was an ardent angler. He was also a lover of prints, and made a fine collection of Bewick's woodcuts. For more than twenty years he was chairman of the committee of the Sunday Society, which has for its object the opening of museums, picture galleries, and public libraries on Sunday.

Corfield's chief works are: 1. ‘A Digest of Facts relating to the Treatment and Utilisation of Sewage,’ 1870; 3rd edit. 1887. 2. ‘Water and Water Supply,’ Part 1; and ‘Sewerage and Sewerage Utilisation,’ Part 2, New York, 1875. 3. ‘Dwelling Houses: their Sanitary Construction and Arrangements,’ 1880; 4th edit. 1898; translated into French from 2nd edit. by P. Jardet, Paris, 1889. 4. ‘Laws of Health,’ 1880; 9th edit. 1896. 5. ‘Disease and Defective House Sanitation,’ 1896; translated into French, Italian and Hungarian. 6. ‘Public Health Laboratory Work,’ 1884 (jointly with W. W. Cheyne and C. E. Cassal).

 CORNISH, CHARLES JOHN (1858–1906), naturalist, born on 28 Sept. 1858 at Salcombe House, near Sidmouth, the residence of his grandfather, Charles John Cornish, J.P., D.L., was eldest son of Charles John Cornish, then curate of Sidbury, Devonshire, by his first wife, Anne Charlotte Western (d. 1887). He was brought up at Debenham, Suffolk, where his