Jones, Henry MacNaughton (1845–1918), doctor, was born in Cork city, son of William Thomas Jones, MD, and Helen MacNaughton Jones. He was educated at QCC, graduating MD (1864), M.Ch. and LRCPI (1865), FRCSI (1870), and FRCS (Edin.) (1873). Aged 19, he was appointed demonstrator, and later demonstrator and lecturer, in descriptive anatomy before being appointed professor of midwifery (1878–83) at QCC and RUI examiner in midwifery (1881).
As a junior doctor he worked in eight poor law dispensary districts in Cork city for six years before resigning in 1872, when he was appointed physician to the Cork Fever Hospital (1872–83); he was later surgeon to the South Charitable Infirmary and County Hospital (1877–83). He founded (1868) and was physician (1868–82) to the Cork Ophthalmic Hospital, Nile St. (often referred to as the old Cork Eye Ear and Throat Hospital), which in the first eleven years treated over 2,000 intern and 20,000 extern patients. In 1872 he was co-founder and physician to the Cork Maternity Hospital, Nile St. (which later moved to Bachelors’ Quay), established to provide free care for poor pregnant women in their homes and to educate nurses. During the first five years 1,611 women received care and twenty nurses were trained. He was co-founder (1874) and secretary to the medical committee (1877–9), visiting medical officer (1874–80), and consulting surgeon (1880–83) to the County and City of Cork Hospital for Women and Children (renamed the Victoria Hospital in 1901). Jones was founder, first secretary, and president (1877) of the Irish branch of the British Medical Association in Cork, and it was on his suggestion that the AGM of the association was invited to Cork in 1879.
Jones was a central figure in the development of medicine in Cork, and his failure to gain the chair of materia medica (1875) or of surgery (1880) at QCC may have precipitated his move in 1883 to London, where he gained a reputation in obstetrics and gynaecology and practised from Harley St. He maintained a deep interest in QCC, founded the Old Corkonians graduate club (1905) in London, and in 1909 made clear his objections and those of the club to the change of name from QCC to UCC. He is reputed to have composed the college motto ‘Where Finbarr taught, let Munster learn’, though he merely popularised it in verse recited at the inaugural dinner of the Old Corkonians (1905). A member of several learned societies, including the County and City of Cork Medical and Surgical Society – of which he was president (1880) – and the Surgical Society of Ireland, he was thrice president of the Irish Medical Schools and Graduates Association, twice president of the British Gynaecological Society, and president of the Obstetrical and Gynaecological Section of the Royal Society of Medicine. Honorary member of the obstetrical societies of Belgium, Leipzig, Munich, and Rome, he was hon. president of the international congresses of obstetrics and gynaecology in Amsterdam, Rome, Paris, St Petersburg, and Berlin, and was awarded hon. MAO (RUI) in 1886.
Author of a number of medical books which included the Atlas of diseases of the membrana tympani (1878), Points of practical interests in gynaecology (1900; 3rd ed. 1902), and Practical manual of diseases of women and uterine therapeutics (1884; 9th ed. 1904), and joint author of Practical handbook of diseases of the ear and nasopharynx (1887; 6th ed. 1902), he published numerous papers on a variety of subjects including ophthalmology, surgery, otology, and anaesthesia. He also published collections of poetry, including The Thames (1906) and A piece of delph and other poems (1908). He died 26 April 1918 at his home, The Rest, 6 Ravenscroft Park, Barnet, north Middlesex, and was buried at West Hampstead cemetery, London.
He married (1866) Henrietta Gregg; they had five children, three of whom survived him.