Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/328

 vocabulary, from the identity of Christian name, Ruskin's 'dear brother John' (Works of Ruskin, xxxv. 433; see especially Sesame and Lilies, xviii. 105, and Time and Tide, § 162, xvii. 450). Simon gave Ruskin sound advice as to his health, which Ruskin did not always adopt (see Sir Life of Ruskin, 1911, i. 392, and Ruskin's correspondence with Simon and his wife in Buskin's Works, ed.  and, xxxvi.-vii. passim). To Ruskin the Simons owed their friendship with Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Lady Burne-Jones.

In March 1898, being then in failing health, Simon prepared for private circulation some 'Personal Recollections,' which were revised on 2 Dec. 1903, 'in blindness and infirmity.' He died at his house. 40 Kensington Square (where he had lived since 1867), on 23 July 1904, and was buried at Lewisham cemetery, Ladywell. By his will the ultimate residue of his estate was bequeathed to St. Thomas's Hospital. A bust by Thomas Woolner, R.A., executed in 1876, is at the Royal College of Surgeons.

On 22 July 1848 he married Jane (1816-1901) daughter of Matthew Delaval O'Meara, deputy commissary-general in the Peninsular war. He had no issue. Lady Simon was as close a friend of Ruskin as was her husband, and Ruskin famiharly named her his 'dear P.R.S.' (Pre-Raphaelite sister and Sibyl), or more shortly 'S.' (cf., Memorials of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, i. 257).

Sir Richard Douglas Powell, in his presidential address to the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1905 (vol. lxxxviii. p. cxv), said of Simon that he ' was a man gifted with true genius, and inspired with the love of his kind. He will ever remain a noble figure in the medicine of the nineteenth century, and will live in history as the apostle of sanitation.' The most important feature of Simon's work was his insistence that practice should be based on scientific knowledge, and his recognition of the large field for investigation without reference to immediate practical results. He was confident that such research (to use his own words) 'would lead to more precise and intimate knowledge of the causes and processes of important diseases, and thus augment, more and more, the vital resources of preventive medicine.'

Simon's chief reports and writings on sanitary subjects were) issued collectively by subscription by the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain (2 vols. 1887). In 1890 he brought out 'English Sanitary Institutions, reviewed in their Course of Development, and in some of their Political and Social Relations' (2nd edit. 1897), a masterly survey which contains an elaborate vindication of his official career. Besides addresses to medical bodies, Simon wrote in 1878 a comprehensive article on Contagion for the 'Dictionary of Medicine' edited by Sir Richard Quain [q. v. Suppl. I].

 SIMONDS, JAMES BEART (1810–1904), veterinary surgeon, born at Lowestoft, Suffolk, on 18 Feb. 1810, was son of James Simonds (d. Oct. 1810) by his wiie, a daughter of Robert Beart of Rickenhall, Suffolk, an agriculturist and horse-breeder. The father was grandson of James Simonds (born in 1717), who early left the original family home at Redenhall, Norfolk, for Halesworth, Suffolk. Of his five sons born there, Samuel (born in 1754), the fourth, who resided at Bungay in Suffolk, had four sons, the eldest (Samuel) and youngest (John) entering the veterinary profession; the second son, James, was father of the subject of this notice.

James Beart, brought up by his grand-parents at Bungay, was educated at the Bungay grammar school, and entered the Veterinary College in London as a student on 7 Jan. 1828. He received his diploma to practise in March 1829, and succeeded to his uncle Samuel's business as a veterinary surgeon at Bimgay. In 1836 he migrated to Twickenham, and shortly after took a share in organising the scientific work connected with the animals of the farm of the then newly established English Agricultural Society, of which he became an ordinary member on 25 July 1838 (honorary member, 3 April 1849; foundation life governor, 5 March 1890). In 1842 he was appointed to a new professorship of cattle pathology at the Veterinary College in Camden Town, and was made consulting veterinary surgeon to the Royal Agricultural Society (a position he held 