The life of Edward Headlam Greenhow is described in Public Health Vol. 1., May 1888 to April 1889, published by E.W. Allen, Ave Maria Lane, Paternoster Row, E.C. pages 277 and 278.

This was the section dealing with the issue for December. It contained a single large paragraph.

WE have to record the death, at the age of 74, of Dr. E. H. Greenhow, consulting physician to the Middlesex Hospital, and one who occupied a prominent position in the metropolis as a physician and sanitarian. His death occurred under somewhat painful circumstances. He was returning to his home at Reigate on the afternoon of the 22nd ult., after attending to his duties as medical officer to the Pensions Commutation Board, when, while at Charing Cross Station, he was attacked with syncope, and died within half an hour. Dr. Greenhow was born at North Shields in 1814, and after receiving his medical education at Edinburgh and Montpelier, he joined his father in practice in that town. Here he practiced for eighteen years, and did much useful work in sanitation, becoming a member of the Town Council of Tynemouth and chairman of the Board of Health. In 1852 he graduated M.D. at King`s College, Aberdeen, and in 1853 established himself in London as a consulting physician. For some years he was largely engaged in work connected with public health, being appointed lecturer on this subject at St. Thomas`s Hospital (the first appointment of the kind in the country). An elaborate inquiry he personally undertook into the excessive mortality from certain diseases in certain districts in England, for the purpose of his lectures, was published as a parliamentary paper by Mr. Simon, then medical officer of the Board of Health. The facts gathered in this inquiry were made the basis of much of the future work arising out of the Public Health Act, 1858, when Mr. Simon was medical officer to the Privy Council. Dr. Greenhow was engaged to undertake inquiries into diphtheria (1859) and pulmonary disease among operatives (miners, grinders, flax-dressers, etc.), his report on this latter subject (1860-1861) being of great value and of wide interest. In 1859 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and in 1861 was elected assistant physician to the Middlesex Hospital and lecturer on the subjects of public health and medical jurisprudence in the medical school. In 1871 he became physician and lecturer on medicine ; he did good service to the hospital and its school during his whole connection with them, and on his retirement from the acting staff in 1880 was elected consulting physician to the hospital. Dr. Greenhow was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1870) and a member of many medical societies, to which he largely contributed. In 1881-2 he was president of the Clinical Society of London, which he had taken a great share in founding in 1867. He was the author of works on diphtheria, chronic bronchitis, and upon Addison`s disease, the latter subject being selected by him for his Croonian lectures, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians in 1875. Dr. Greenhow married, in 1842, the widow of Mr. W. Barnard, by whom he had one son, the Rev. E. Greenhow, vicar of Earsdon. She died in 1857, and in 1862 he married the second daughter of Mr. Joseph Hume, M.P., by whom he had two daughters. As a practical physician and clinical teacher, and as one of the earliest workers in sanitary science, Dr. Greenhow`s name will be remembered, while the fruits of his industrious and busy life are recorded in the medical literature. It should further be added that he served on more than one Royal Commission, of which Lord Kimberley was chairman ; while he had been the medical officer to the Pensions Commutation Board from its formation in 1870 until the day of his death.

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