Sir Jonathan Hutchinson (23 July 1828 – 23 June 1913), was an English surgeon, ophthalmologist, dermatologist, venereologist, and pathologist. Life He was born in Selby, Yorkshire, of Quaker parents and educated in the local school. Then he was apprenticed for five years to Caleb Williams, an apothecary and surgeon in York. He entered St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1850 (and a fellow in 1862), and rapidly gained reputation as a skillful operator and a scientific inquirer. While a student, Hutchinson chose a career in surgery from 1854 on, under the influence and help of his mentor, Sir James Paget (1814–99). In 1851, he studied ophthalmology at Moorfields and practised it at London Ophthalmic Hospital. Other hospitals where he practised in the following years were the Lock Hospital, the City of London Chest Hospital, the London Hospital, the Metropolitan Hospitals, and the Blackfriars Hospital for Diseases of the Skin. His intense activity in so many medical specialties reflected also in his involvement with several medical societies. He was president of the Hunterian Society in 1869 and 1870, professor of surgery and pathology at the Royal College of Surgeons from 1877 to 1882, president of the Pathological Society (1879–80), of the Ophthalmological Society (1883), of the Neurological Society (1887) of the Medical Society (1890), and of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society from 1894 to 1896. In 1889, he was president of the Royal College of Surgeons. He was a member of two royal commissions, that of 1881 to inquire into the provision for smallpox and fever cases in the London hospitals, and that of 1889–96 on vaccination and leprosy. He also acted as honorary secretary to the Sydenham Society. In June 1882 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was the first orator at the York Medical Society. Hutchinson is considered the father of oral medicine by some. Works Hutchinson's activity in the cause of scientific surgery and in advancing the study of the natural sciences was unwearying. He published more than 1,200 medical articles and also produced the quarterly Archives of Surgery from 1890 to 1900, being its only contributor. His lectures on neuropathogenesis, gout, leprosy, diseases of the tongue, etc., were full of original observation; but his principal work was connected with the study of syphilis, on which he became the first living authority. He