Stokes, Henry (1879–1967), surgeon, was born 11 January 1879 in India, eldest son of Henry John Stokes (1842–1920), of the Indian Civil Service, and his wife Mary Anne (d. 1942), daughter of William MacDoughall of Howth, Co. Dublin. His family had a distinguished record in the annals of Irish medicine: his grandfather was Prof. Whitley Stokes (qv) of TCD, and his uncle was Sir William Stokes (qv), the noted surgeon. His younger brother was Adrian Stokes (qv), physician and professor of bacteriology at TCD.
Educated at Strangway's School on Stephen's Green, Dublin, he entered TCD, graduating MB and B.Ch. (1903) and MD (1905), and was elected as a fellow of the RCSI in 1907. Further studies followed at Leyden and Berne universities and at the Mayo Clinic in America. On returning to Dublin, he joined the staff at the Meath Hospital and was made visiting surgeon to the Cork St. fever hospital. He was the fourth generation of his family to work at the Meath Hospital. At the outbreak of the first world war, he joined the RAMC and served throughout the war on the western front, where he gained a vast surgical knowledge. He also became acquainted with the methods of carrying out blood transfusions, and would continue his researches in this area on his return to Dublin. Awarded an OBE (1917), he finished the war as a lieutenant-colonel.
On returning to Dublin he was appointed as a consulting surgeon to the National Children's Hospital and to St Ultan's Infant Hospital, while also serving as an examiner at the RCSI. He soon established a reputation as an expert in the area of blood transfusion and gave twenty-nine transfusions during 1920–21. In 1921 he addressed the Academy of Medicine on the subject and outlined methods for the prevention of clotting. He also addressed the problem of securing a supply of blood for use in transfusions, stating: ‘How to have a group of donors is a puzzle I have not solved, but I suggest that it is the duty of all of us to have our blood standardised so that time need not be wasted when demand arises' (Lyons, An assembly of Irish surgeons, 103). By the 1930s he was recognised as one of the leading surgeons in Dublin and was perhaps the first successfully to remove a parathyroid tumour in an operation. He was elected president of the RCSI in June 1940. At the same time, his cousin William Boxwell (qv) was serving as president of the RCPI. The two cousins later posed in their robes for a commemorative photograph on the steps of the Meath Hospital.
Known for his enthusiasm and kindness, he acted as the mentor to many surgical students in Dublin. Not above self-deprecation, he had a very candid manner and gave papers to the Dublin Biological Club, of which he was a former secretary, entitled ‘Some mistakes of Henry Stokes' and later ‘More mistakes of Henry Stokes’. He was also keenly interested in Irish wildlife and field antiquities, perhaps influenced by his aunt, Margaret McNair Stokes (qv), the renowned archaeologist, and was responsible for recovering the remains of specimens of the great Irish elk.
While he did not publish widely, he contributed papers to medical journals such as the Dublin Journal of Medical Science and the Irish Journal of Medical Science. These included ‘Case of puncture wound over the right clavicle, causing loss of pulsation in the arteries of the arm' in Dublin Journal of Medical Science (Oct. 1913) and ‘Transfusion of blood’ in Irish Journal of Medical Science (Mar. 1922). He also wrote on his discoveries of Irish elk remains in an article in the Irish Naturalist (May 1914), ‘On Irish elk and other animal remains found at Howth and Ballybetagh, Co. Dublin'. He retired in 1956, ending a family connection with the Meath Hospital that had lasted for 150 years. He died 3 July 1967 at 11 Temple Villas, Rathmines, Co. Dublin, and was buried in St Fintan's cemetery, Sutton.
He married (September 1911) Kathleen Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Hamilton Franks (1848–1915), CB, JP, secretary to the Irish land commission; they had two sons and two daughters, one of the sons dying in infancy. His eldest daughter, Elizabeth Honoria Stokes (later Whitehead), was also a surgeon and FRCSI. Henry Stokes appears in an unusual painting, a copy of which is in the Meath Hospital: ‘An operation in Rome’, by an anonymous artist, depicting him among a group of medical men watching an operation being performed.