Blenheim horsesGeorge Lennox Moore M.D. L.R.C..P. M.R.C.V.S. (1834 – 1890) was a British orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy to become personal homeopathic physician to a number of British royals and aristocrats, including Alexandra of Denmark, the future Queen consort of King Edward VII.

Moore was one of the founders and a committee member of the Midland Homoeopathic Medical Society, and was a member of the British Homeopathic Society. He was also a Medical Officer of the Caledonian Fire and Life Assurance Company.

Like his father James, George Moore also had an interest in veterinary homeopathy, and wrote several important papers on the use of homeopathic remedies when treating the cattle plague outbreak of 1865 – 1867.

George Moore initially practiced at 92 Grosvenor Street, All Saints, Manchester. He also practiced in Stoke on Trent and, later in his career, in London at 3, Hertford Street, Mayfair.

George Moore was a colleague of Robert Ellis Dudgeon, John Epps, Robert Douglas Hale, Thomas Robinson Leadam, Henry Ridewood Madden, Herbert Nankivell, Edward Harris Ruddock, Robert Walker, David Wilson, Stephen Yeldham, and many others.

George Moore was born in 1834, the eldest son of James Moore (1807 – 1886), who was the first homeopathic veterinary surgeon in Britain.

George Moore received his medical training at the Pine Street School of Medicine, later Victoria University, in Manchester.

In 1855, Moore was admitted as a Licentiate of the Glasgow Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons. He was soon appointed as House Surgeon to the Manchester and Salford Homeopathic Dispensary that had been established by Dr. Robert Walker in 1854.

In 1858, George Moore married Frances Catherine Irwin (1835 – 1919). They had seven children: Dr. George Lennox Moore (1860 – 1940), Frances Margaret Bryden Moore (1865 – c. 1949), James Lennox Irwin Moore (1866 – 1953), Mildred Agnes Moore (1867 – 1949), Euphemia Lucy Moore (1868 – 1895), William Fradgley Moore (1872 – 1952).

A couple of years later, Moore relocated to Stoke-on-Trent, where he set up a flourishing private practice. There he also developed a reputation for his skillful treatment of throat and chest diseases among the coal miners and potters.

While practicing in Shelton, near Stoke-on-Trent, one of his more illustrious patients was Anne Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland (1829 – 1888), with whom Moore maintained a warm friendship, attending her until her death. During a visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales, Albert Edward and Alexandra, to Trentham Hall, the Staffordshire seat of the Dukes of Sutherland, in 1866, Moore was called in to prescribe for her Royal Highness. From that point on, he remained one of Alexandra’s personal physicians until his death.

Moore became a member of the British Homeopathic Society in 1860. The following year, 1861, he obtained his Licence from the Royal College of Physicians, and the year after, 1862, he was awarded his M.D. from the University of St Andrews.

George Moore was one of a number of homeopaths who attended a banquet dinner held on 16 May 1861, at the London Coffee House in honour of Frederick Hervey Foster Quin.

On the evening of Thursday 15 June, 1865, George Moore, was one of a group of medical men who met at the Stork Hotel in Birmingham to form a new association, the Midland Homoeopathic Medical Society. Moore was elected a member of the committee tasked with drawing up the rules of the new society, along with James Smith Ayerst, James Gibbs Blake, John Hitchman, Henry Robertson, William Sharp, John Stuart Sutherland, and Edward Wynne Thomas.

During 1865 – 1867, a cattle plague crisis engulfed British agriculture. Undoubtedly inspired by his father, who issued several books advocating an homeopathic approach to treating cattle plague, George Moore contributed a number of articles on the subject in the pages of the homeopathic press. These included two well-received articles in the British Journal of Homoeopathy in 1866, “On the Early Stages of the Cattle Plague,” and an account of the homeopathic treatment conducted by his father and brother Robert in Norfolk, “Analysis of Report on the Norfolk Trial of Homoeopathy in the Cattle Plague.”

George Moore achieved notability for advocating the use of sprays to deliver medication into the body. His first book on this subject, On Some Diseases of the Nose, Throat, Air-Tubes and Lungs, and Their Local Treatment, published in 1867, also contained an historical sketch of the use of medicated vapours and sprays. This was followed by a succession of published works, including Enlarged Tonsils, Curable Without Cutting.

Moore was the first person in England to treat asthma with sprays and, in 1883, he developed a new nasal inhaler, manufactured for him by C. Wright and Co. of New Bond Street, London.

George Moore removed to London in 1869, where he built up another thriving practice, specializing in throat and chest diseases, and counting several members of the Royal Family among his patients, in what was described as “a highly successful and aristocratic practice.” He was also associated with the London Homeopathic Hospital.

He submitted very many cases and articles to various homeopathic publications.

George Moore died at his Mayfair home on Wednesday 8 January 1890, after catching a severe chill during his professional duties that developed into broncho-pneumonia. His Obituary was in The Homoeopathic World, and in The Lancet, although there was no mention of his practicing homeopathically in the latter Obituary.

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Of interest:

James Moore M.R.C.V.S. (1807 – 1886), the father of George Lennox Moore, was the first British Homeopathic Veterinary Surgeon. James Moore became involved with Association for the Trial of Preventative and Curative Treatment in the Cattle Plague by the Homeopathic Method, alongside his son Robert Moore, Edward Hamilton and Alfred Crosby Pope, and overseen by John Winston Spencer Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough.

Robert Moore M.R.C. V.S. (18), brother of George Moore, was an homeopathic veterinary surgeon based at 11 Upper Berkeley Street, Portman Square, London.

Thomas Moore M.R.C. V.S. (18), son of James Moore, brother of George Lennox Moore, was an homeopathic veterinary surgeon based at 11 Upper Berkeley Street, Portman Square, London.

George Lennox Moore L.R.C.P. L.R.C.S. (29 August 1860 – February 1940), son of George Moore, was an homoeopathic physician who practiced in Mayfair, London. He studied at Westminster School and qualified L.R.C.P. and L.R.C.S. from Edinburgh in 1885. In January 1918, Moore married Elizabeth Gertrude Womersley (1849 – 1936). Moore worked at the Westminster Hospital and practiced in Mayfair for upwards of fifty years.

James Lennox Irwin Moore M.B. C.M. F.R.S.M. (1866 – 22 March 1953), son of George Moore, was Consulting Surgeon at the Metropolitan Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital, who practiced in Mayfair, London, for more than fifty years as a laryngological specialist. He was born in Shelton, Staffordshire, was educated at Westminster School from 1878- 1880, then studied surgery, qualifying from Edinburgh in November 1893. In 1899, he married Georgina Roberta Price Dent (1862 – c. 1957). After qualifying, he briefly practiced in Market Drayton, Salop, followed by a period in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, but spent most of his career at 30a Wimpole Street, London. During World War One he was commissioned as a Medical Officer with the London Volunteers Regiment. He was a member of the General Council of the University of Edinburgh, a medical referee for several assurance companies, including Scottish Widows. He was a Demonstrator of Anatomy at Edinburgh Medical School, and was Clinical Assistant at the Hospital For Women in Soho Square.

John Murray Moore M.D. M.R.C.S. L.R.C.S. L.S.A. F.R.G.S. (1843 – 1919), [no evident relation], was a British orthodox physician at the Liverpool Home for Incurables and President of The Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, who converted to homeopathy to become the Medical Officer at the Liverpool Homeopathic Dispensary, Medical Officer of the Caledonian Fire and Life Assurance Company, Vice President of the Liverpool Branch of the British Homeopathic Society, President of the British Homeopathic Congress in 1908, a member of the Northern Homeopathic Medical  Association, and Vice President of The Homeopathic Medico-Chirurigal Society of Liverpool.