Life

Fagge was the son of Charles Fagge, a medical practitioner, and nephew of John Hilton. He was born in Hythe, Kent

Hythe, Kent

Hythe , is a small coastal market town on the edge of Romney Marsh, in the District of Shepway on the south coast of Kent. The word Hythe or Hithe is an Old English word meaning Haven or Landing Place....

 on 30 June 1838. Fagge entered Guy's Hospital

Guy's Hospital

Guy's Hospital is a large NHS hospital in the borough of Southwark in south east London, England. It is administratively a part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. It is a large teaching hospital and is home to the King's College London School of Medicine...

 medical school in October 1856, and in 1859, at the first M.B. examination at the university of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

, gained three scholarships and gold medals; in 1861, at the final M.B. examination, he gained scholarships and gold medals for medicine and for physiology, and a gold medal for surgery. In 1863 he graduated M.D., in 1864 became a member, and in 1870 a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians

Royal College of Physicians

The Royal College of Physicians of London was founded in 1518 as the College of Physicians by royal charter of King Henry VIII in 1518 - the first medical institution in England to receive a royal charter...

.

After being demonstrator of anatomy from 1862 to 1866, Fagge became medical registrar of Guy's in 1866, assistant physician in 1867, and physician in 1880. He was for some years demonstrator of morbid anatomy, lecturer on pathology, and curator of the museum at Guy's. He for some years edited the Guy's Hospital Reports, and at the time of his death was examiner in medicine to the university of London. For about a year and a half he had suffered from aneurysm

Aneurysm

An aneurysm or aneurism is a localized, blood-filled balloon-like bulge in the wall of a blood vessel. Aneurysms can commonly occur in arteries at the base of the brain and an aortic aneurysm occurs in the main artery carrying blood from the left ventricle of the heart...

 of the aorta

Aorta

The aorta is the largest artery in the body, originating from the left ventricle of the heart and extending down to the abdomen, where it branches off into two smaller arteries...

, but he continued to work on his treatise on medicine, which had occupied him for twelve years or more. He had been occupied on the last day of his life in reading examination papers, when he was seized with difficulty of breathing, and died in half an hour on 18 November 1883, at his house in Grosvenor Street, in his forty-sixth year. He left a widow and two daughters. A bronze tablet was erected to his memory in the museum of Guy's Hospital.

Works

He wrote original papers and his Principles and Practice of Medicine, published in 1886, with additions by Samuel Wilks

Samuel Wilks

Sir Samuel Wilks, 1st Baronet , was a British physician and biographer.-Early life:Samuel Wilks was born on 2 June 1824 in Camberwell, London, the second son of Joseph Barber Wilks, a cashier at the East India House...

 and Philip Henry Pye-Smith

Philip Henry Pye-Smith

Philip Henry Pye-Smith was a physician, medical scientist and educator. His interest was physiology, specialising in skin diseases....

 (editor). He translated the first volume of Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra

Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra

Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra was an Austrian physician and dermatologist,...

's work on cutaneous diseases into English for the New Sydenham Society, and classified and catalogued the models of skin diseases in the museum of Guy's Hospital. He contributed papers on skin diseases to the ‘Guy's Hospital Reports,’ the major one being ‘On Scleriasis and Allied Affections,’ 1867. An article on ‘Intestinal Obstruction’ appeared in the same reports in 1868. He wrote the article on ‘Valvular Disease of the Heart’ in Sir John Russell Reynolds's ‘System of Medicine’ (vol. iv.); others in the area were on ‘Mitral Contraction,’ ‘Acute Dilatation of the Stomach,’ ‘Abdominal Abscess,’ and on ‘Fibroid Disease of the Heart’ (‘Transactions of the Pathological Society,’ xxv. 64–98).

With Dr. Thomas Stevenson

Thomas Stevenson (toxicologist)

Thomas Stevenson was an English toxicologist and forensic chemist. He served as an analyst to the Home Office and in England he served as an expert witness in many famous poisoning cases. These included the Pimlico Mystery, The Maybrick Case, and the George Chapman case.In 1857 Stevenson became a...

, he made a series of researches on the application of physiological tests for digitaline and other poisons (Proc. Roy. Soc. 1865; Guy's Hospital Reports, 1866).