Herbert Gastineau Earle went from the City of London School (incidentally the school of our late Treasurer Dr Paul Lauder) to Downing College, Cambridge, where he was a foundation scholar and to the Westminster Hospital. He gained a first class in the Natural Science Tripos. He took the Cambridge BA degree in 1905 and the MA, MB degrees of that University in 1913. For nine years he was a Demonstrator in Physiology and for six of those years he was also Joint Lecturer in Biology at the Middlesex Hospital, London. In 1915 he came to this University as our first Professor of Physiology. 1928 he was appointed General Adviser to the Lester trust and he now combines that office with the Directorship of the Henry Lester Institute of Medical Research and Preventive Medicine, Shanghai.
Dr Earle is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and Fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He is so much else that I cannot tell the full tale of his many offices and distinctions. He has carried out researches in metabolism and many of his papers including one on the Basal Metabolism of Chinese and Westerners have been published in scientific journals.
Dr Earle, those of us who remember you work here, what a good teacher you were, how excellent was your influence in the University and how completely you and your wife and your children won all our affections rejoice to see you awaiting the honour which His Excellency the Chancellor is about to confer upon you. The conferment on you of this University’s honorary doctorate is not only a mark of the University’s appreciation of your scientific attainments and of the high and honourable office which you now hold; it is also a token of the University’s esteem of your outstanding qualities and of your endearing personality. The institution over which you preside owes its existence to a Britisher. In the fight that is being waged against disease in the Henry Lester Institute of Medical Research and Preventive Medicine, Shanghai, you and your colleagues are, in a real sense, heirs to that great and devoted doctor who was the father of this University’s Medical Faculty. In the mutual memory of Sir Patrick Manson we are glad to add your name to the list of the University’s honorary graduates and in doing so we appeal to you to help the medical work of the University in every possible way that you can. Our appeal will not, I know, be in vain.
Citation written and delivered by The Vice-Chancellor Sir William Hornell, the Public Orator of the University.
