MACKENZIE, SIR MORELL (1837-1892), British phy sician, son of Stephen Mackenzie, surgeon (d. 1851), was born at Leytonstone, Essex, on July 7, 1837. He studied at the London hospital, at Paris, Vienna and Pesth, where he learnt the use of the newly-invented laryngoscope under J. N. Czermak. In 1862 he took his degree and became a specialist in diseases of the throat. In 1863 he helped to found the Throat hospital in King street, Golden square, and became a leading authority.
In May 1887 he was summoned to attend the German Crown Prince Frederick, whose illness was difficult to diagnose. The summoning of the English specialist was attributed to the Em press Frederick, but she was not responsible, still less, as stated in Germany, Queen Victoria (see Correspondence in The Times, Jan.-Feb. 1928). The German physicians who had attended the prince since the beginning of March (Karl Gerhardt, and subse quently Tobold, E. von Bergmann, and others) had diagnosed his disease on May 18 as cancer of the throat ; but Morell Mackenzie insisted (basing his opinion on a microscopical examination by R. Virchow of a portion of the tissue) that the disease was not demonstrably cancerous, that an operation for the extirpation of the larynx (planned for the 21st May) was unjustifiable, and that the growth might well be a benign one and therefore curable by other treatment. Morell Mackenzie's opinion was followed; he
was knighted in September 1887 for his services, and decorated with the Grand Cross of the Hohenzollern Order. In November, however, it was ultimately admitted that the disease really was cancer; though Mackenzie, with very questionable judgment, more than hinted that it had become malignant since his first examina tion, in consequence of the irritating effect of the treatment by the German doctors. The crown prince (see FREDERICK III.) became emperor on March 9, 1888, and died on June 15. A violent quarrel raged between Sir Morell Mackenzie and the German medical world. The German doctors published an account of the illness, to which Mackenzie replied by a work entitled The Fatal Illness of Frederick the Noble (1888), the publication of which caused him to be censured by the Royal College of Surgeons. Morell Mac kenzie died on Feb. 3, 1892, leaving several books on laryngoscopy and diseases of the throat.