William Reginald Grove

Reginald Grove MB MD (1869-1948) was a country doctor in the market town of St Ives, Cambridgeshire in Huntingdonshire for 54 years. In addition to his service to the local community he made a valued contribution to general medical knowledge through his clinical studies and findings published in a number of medical journals.
==Life==
Grove was educated as a chorister at King’s College Choir school, training under the organist and composer Arthur Henry Mann and taught by the Vice Provost Augustus Austen Leigh with whom he later became friends. He then spent five years at Uppingham School during the headship of the renowned Edward Thring. The diariesUppingham School Archives, copy diaries 1881-1887 held that he kept form a unique insight into life as a schoolboy under Thring which have contributed to a greater understanding of this giant of Victorian education.
Grove studied at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, captained the college rowing eight in his last year and edited the first publications of the Cambridge University Association of Brass Collectors (now the Monumental Brass Society).
At Guy's Hospital Medical School, Grove was trained by a number of respected consultants such as Walter Jacobson, and Henry Howse and was given lectures in medical jurisprudence and chemistry by Thomas Stevenson (toxicologist) who was famed for his expert witness testimony in a number of notorious murder trials. Invited to Stevenson’s home as a young student, Grove met his daughters, and married one of them, Hilda Clara, in 1897.
After qualifying, Grove took over his father’s general practice during the latter’s ill health and subsequent death. As the Medical Officer of Health for St Ives and Medical Officer for the St Ives Workhouse Grove made his mark on the life of his community.
He was a regular contributor to medical publications on a number of medical matters based on his observations of patients: his article on the Infectivity of Inherited Syphilis was published in the British Medical Journal in 1906. resulted in a series of correspondence. His other contributions in that publication were on the treatment for pulmonary tuberculous, ’Calcium Deficiencies: their treatment by parathyroid,’’ ‘’Hydropericardium in the diagnosis of coronary thrombosis’’ (jointly)The Practitioner 1929 reported in the Medical Directory for 1942 for Grove and ‘Rex v. Donnellan, 1781’ which dealt with the trial of John Donellan for poisoning Sir Theodosius Edward Allesley Boughton in 1780.
His particular interest was Graves' disease|Graves’ disease, on which he submitted a thesis for his MD in 1907The type written dissertation is held privately by the Grove family. He corresponded on this subject in the British Medical Journal later that year following an article by another doctor, the findings of which he disagreed. 
He presented his findings, and that of a colleague, Dr Howard William Coupland Vines, on the Etiology and Treatment of Varicose Ulcers at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association in 1921. Vines was a Beit Memorial Research Fellow. Their work was published later that year in the British Medical Journal. 
At the Royal Society of Medicine Annual Meeting in 1923, Grove presented his findings on organotherapy. His talk was then printed in the Society’s annual proceedings. 
Grove was President of the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Medical Association from 1914-1918 and gave a number of presentations based on his own clinical observations.The subjects covered were parathyroid, hydropericardium, Addison’s Disease, calcium in haemorrhage, and the implications of iodine given internally 
Besides his clinical contributions to medical practice, he was remembered by his patients with great affectionFor recollections of two patients see: Denis, Father - Father Algy (1964) Hodder and Stoughton Ltd pp. 102 -105 and Pratt, Edith, As if it was yesterday (1978) The Grasshopper Press, Fenstanton, Hunts. p.48; pp 62-75 and respect as a reassuring family doctor. 
==Bibliography==
* Flower, Peter, The Life and Times of a Victorian Country Doctor. A portrait of Reginald Grove. Volume 1: life at home (2021) Brown Dog Books ISBN 978-1-83952-207-9
* Flower, Peter, The Life and Times of a Victorian Country Doctor. A portrait of Reginald Grove. Volume 2: life at school (2021) Brown Dog Books ISBN 978-1-83952-206-2
* Uppingham School Roll 1824-1905 (3rd Issue) 1906 Edward Stanford
* Venn, John, Alumni Cantabrigienses (Cambridge University Press) Part 2 Volume 3 (1947).
Category:1869 births
Category:1948 deaths
Category:Doctors