Millais Culpin


Millais Culpin FRCS was an English physician and psychotherapist. He was born in Ware, Hertfordshire and died in St Albans, Hertfordshire. Culpin is commemorated by a blue plaque in Meads, Loughton. Most known for his work during The First World War, Culpin treated shell-shocked soldiers at the Ewell War Hospital.
Culpin appears as a character in the Casualty 1907 and Casualty 1909 television series, where he was played by Will Houston.

Early and Adult Life

Millais Culpin was born in Ware, Hertfordshire in 1874, the second of six children, to Millice Culpin, and Hanna Louisa Munsey. Culpin spent his early years in Stoke Newington, where he attended Grocers' Company's (Hackney Downs) School and acquired a lifelong interest in entomology.
He then attended the University of London in 1891 while the rest of his family emigrated to Australia. Culpin's father settled the family in Brisbane and set up a medical practice.
In 1892 Culpin took a temporary assistant teaching position at a school in Laura, Queensland following an unprofitable time in the Gympie Goldfields. While in the teaching position, Cuplin wrote multiple letters that were later published by his daughter and pursued an interest in insects. After four years of the teaching position, he moved to Ross Island, Townsville and continued to assistant teach.

Early Medical Career

In 1897 Culpin returned to England to study at the London Hospital in Whitechapel, becoming a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1902. He went back to Queensland for a year to assist his father in Brisbane before re-enrolling at the London Hospital. He graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery in 1905 and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1907.
Culpin traveled to Shanghai where he worked as a surgeon treating casualties during the Revolution of 1911. Although the revolution only lasted around four months, Culpin remained in Shanghai. While in Shanghai, Culpin met Ethel Maude Bennett, a nurse at the Shanghai-Nanking Railway Hospital. They married in 1913 and had their only child Frances Millais Culpin in Young, New South Wales in 1914.

First World War

After the birth of their daughter the family returned to England where Culpin had the hopes of opening a practice. However, he was commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps as a surgeon when the First World War broke out. While working in France he encountered many cases of Shell Shock.
Culpin was one of the first doctors to suggest that Shell Shock was an emotional disturbance rather than physical trauma. In 1917 Culpin became a neurological specialist to the Army and worked at the forefront of research pertaining to causes and treatments of Shell Shock.

Post War Contributions

Culpin left the Army in 1919 where he was appointed as a lecturer in psychoneuroses at the London Hospital as well as maintained a private practice as a psychotherapist.
Culpin was approached with researching industrial health and telegraphists' cramp where he was able to show that it conformed to a group of disabilities known as psychoneuroses. This brought him into being appointed as a Professor of Medical Industrial Psychology at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London in 1931.
Culpin retired in 1939 but continued to investigate problems of miner's nystagmus, became president of the British Psychological Association in 1944, was involved in the China Medical Aid Committee, and maintained his interests in mental traumas during the Second World War.
Culpin passed at home in St. Albans of a pulmonary embolism September 14, 1952.

Publications

  • Mental Abnormality: Facts and Theories
  • Psychology in Medicine
  • Recent Advances in the Study of Psychoneuroses
  • Spiritualism and the New Psychology: An Explanation of Spiritualist Phenomena and Beliefs in Terms of Modern Knowledge
  • ''Medicine and the Man''