Appendix
Sir William Richard Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield (1877 - 1963)
Category
Household and miscellaneous
Date
1928
Materials
Human tissue, Preserving fluid, Glass, Wood, Tape, Felt
Measurements
85 mm (W)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Nuffield Place, Oxfordshire
NT 1651877
Caption
Not for the squeamish, this small glass case at Nuffield Place in Oxfordshire has a very personal connection to a former resident. On a specimen slide, covered in preserving fluid, is the appendix of William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield (1877– 1963), removed by surgery in 1928 and kept on a workbench in his bedroom, among his tools. He had insomnia and would often get up at night to tinker at the workbench. Lord Nuffield owned the Morris Motor Company and was at one time Britain’s richest self-made man, as well as a great philanthropist. He donated substantial sums to the University of Oxford to help establish Nuffield College, and in 1936–7 he also helped to establish Oxford’s Postgraduate Medical School. His £2 million donation (the equivalent of around £80 million today) included research endowments for chairs in medicine, surgery and obstetrics, and he offered to fund a fourth chair in anaesthesia. The university was reluctant but Lord Nuffield got his way. His insistence may well have been because of a painful reaction to anaesthetics at the dentist, which contrasted with the pain-free removal of his appendix in 1928.
Summary
Appendix. From Sir William Morris, 1928. On specimen slide in preserving fluid. Glass case. Black base, green felted.
Provenance
Collection William R. Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield, by bequest to Nuffield College, University of Oxford, 1963, by transfer to National Trust, Nuffield Place, 2011.
Makers and roles
Sir William Richard Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield (1877 - 1963)