# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Garrod, Alfred Baring

​GARROD, Sir ALFRED BARING (1819–1907), physician, born at Ipswich on 13 May 1819, was second child and only son of the five children of Robert Garrod of that town, by his wife, Sarah Enew Clamp. He was educated at the Ipswich grammar school, and after being apprenticed to Mr. Charles Hammond, surgeon to the East Suffolk Hospital, pursued his medical course at University College Hospital, where he graduated M.B. in 1842, and M.D. London in 1843, gaining the gold medal in medicine at both examinations. In 1847 Garrod was appointed assistant physician to University College Hospital, where he became physician and professor of therapeutics and clinical medicine in 1851. In the latter year he became a licentiate (corresponding to the present member), and in 1856 a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, where he was Gulstonian lecturer in 1857, and lecturer on materia medica in 1864. He was elected F.R.S. in 1858. Having resigned his posts at University College Hospital he was in 1863 elected physician to King's College Hospital and professor of materia medica and therapeutics in King's College; on his retirement in 1874 he was elected consulting physician. At the Royal College of Physicians he was Lumleian lecturer in 1883, the first recipient of the Moxon medal in 1891, censor (1874–5, 1887), and vice-president in 1888. Knighted in 1887, he in 1890 became physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria, and was an honorary member of the Verein für innere Medicin in Berlin.
Garrod, a follower of Prout and Bence Jones, devoted himself to chemical investigation of the problems of disease. His name will always be known in ​connection with the discovery that in gout the blood contains an increased quantity of uric acid, and recent work has tended, in the main, to confirm his views. He announced this discovery in 1848 to the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society (of which he was vice-president in 1880–1). He also separated rheumatoid arthritis from gout, with which it had previously been confused.
At the Medical Society of London, of which he was orator in 1858 and president in 1860, Garrod gave in 1857 the Lettsomian lectures 'On the Pathology and Treatment of Gout.' He long enjoyed an extensive practice, but when old age diminished his work as a consultant he returned with ardour to his chemical investigations.
Garrod died in London on 28 Dec. 1907, and was buried in the Great Northern cemetery, Southgate. He married in 1845 Elizabeth Ann (d. 1891), daughter of Henry Colchester and Elizabeth Sparrow, of the Ancient or Sparrow House in Ipswich. Charles Keene of 'Punch' [q.v.] and Meredith Townsend [q. V. Suppl. II] of the 'Spectator' were Lady Garrod's first cousins. He had issue four sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Alfred Henry [q, v.], and the fourth son, Archibald Edward, were, like their father, elected fellows of the Royal Society. The third son, Herbert Baring, was general secretary of the Teachers' Guild of Great Britain and Ireland (1886-1909). Garrod was author of: 1. 'Treatise on Gout and Rheumatic Gout,' 1859; 3rd edit. 1876, translated into French and German. 2. 'Essentials of Materia Medica and Therapeutics,' 1855; 13th edit. 1890, edited by Nestor Tirard, M.D. He also contributed articles on gout and rheumatism to Reynolds's 'System of Medicine,' 1866, vol. i.
[Brit. Med. Journ., 1908, i. 58; information from his son, A E. Garrod, M.D., F.R.S.]
H. D. R.