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- John Percy Lockhart-Mummery FRCS (14 February 1875 – 24 April 1957), was a British surgeon at St Mark's Hospital, London, who devised a classification of rectal cancer and described familial polyposis which led to the formation of the polyposis registry. He was the author of several books, including Diseases of the Rectum and Colon and their Surgical Treatment (1923) and The Origin of Cancer (1934). His work on colorectal surgery earned him the nickname "King Rectum". His grandfather, his brother, and his father, John Howard Mummery, were all dental surgeons. While studying at Cambridge he developed sarcoma of his leg, for which Joseph Lister carried out an amputation. He completed his clinical training in 1899 at St George's Hospital, London, and in 1904 was appointed Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons. He showed that sigmoidoscopy was safe and effective in looking for diseases of the large bowel. During the First World War he operated at King Edward VII's Hospital Sister Agnes, where he treated mainly gunshot wounds affecting the colon, rectum and anus. Lockhart-Mummery was first secretary of the British Proctological Society, which in 1939, became a section of the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM). Some of his theories on cancer and eugenics are controversial, and were thought of as radical at that time, even by his friend Lord Horder, president of the Eugenics Society. He was also a friend of H. G. Wells, with whom he shared some beliefs about the role of science in the problems of the human body. (en)
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