Arthur Thomas Myers (16 April 1851 – 10 January 1894) was a British physician and sportsman. As a

tennis Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...

player he participated in two

Wimbledon Championships The Wimbledon Championships, commonly called Wimbledon, is a tennis tournament organised by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in collaboration with the Lawn Tennis Association annually in Wimbledon, London. It is chronologically the ...

and also played

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is of three or more days scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officially adju ...

. Myers was born in Cumberland, England and studied at Cheltenham and Trinity College. Aside from his fame from playing tennis, he is also known for his work as a physician at Belgrave Hospital for Children. Due to his health issues, Arthur put his tennis career to a halt and pursued his passion for psychological studies and phenomena of the mind. Due to his epileptic seizures, Myers was never given a position with the staff in the teaching hospital. This resulted in him writing several papers for the

Society for Psychical Research The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to condu ...

, which was founded by his brother Frederic, regarding abstruse problems that were connected to nerve disease and how hypnotism can treat the disease. While studying at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

, in 1870, Myers played a first-class cricket match for

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

against the

Marylebone Cricket Club The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's, Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London, England. The club was the governing body of cricket from 1788 to 1989 and retain ...

. He batted in the middle order and scored seven in the first innings, then six in the second. He was a

Cambridge Apostle The Cambridge Apostles (also known as the Conversazione Society) is an intellectual society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who became the first Bishop of Gibraltar. History Student ...

. Arthur earned his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1881, and became a Fellow for the College of Physicians in 1893. In

1878 Events January * January 5 – Russo-Turkish War: Battle of Shipka Pass IV – Russian and Bulgarian forces defeat the Ottoman Empire. * January 9 – Umberto I becomes King of Italy. * January 17 – Russo-Turkish War: ...

he competed in his first Wimbledon and made it into the quarter-finals, before being defeated in straight sets by eventual champion

Frank Hadow Patrick Francis "Frank" Hadow (2 January 1855 – 29 June 1946) was an English tennis player, who won the Wimbledon championship in 1878. Personal life Born 2 January 1855 Regent's Park, his father was Patrick Douglas Hadow who was educated at ...

. The following year he won his first two matches and was eliminated in the third round, by Irishman C. D. Barry. Myers suffered from

epilepsy Epilepsy is a group of Non-communicable disease, non-communicable Neurological disorder, neurological disorders characterized by a tendency for recurrent, unprovoked Seizure, seizures. A seizure is a sudden burst of abnormal electrical activit ...

and is believed to have taken his own life in 1894.

John Hughlings Jackson John Hughlings Jackson (4 April 1835 – 7 October 1911) was an English neurologist. He is best known for his research on epilepsy. Biography He was born at Providence Green, Green Hammerton, near Harrogate, Yorkshire, the youngest son of Sa ...

published a study of his case. It was believed that Arthur belonged to a family of great intellect and that he was devoted to his studies. Although psychology was still relatively new in the late nineteenth century, there were no known cures for epilepsy. When his epileptic attacks got to be too much for him, it resulted in his untimely death at age of forty-two. He was the brother of scholar

Frederic William Henry Myers Frederic William Henry Myers (6 February 1843 – 17 January 1901) was a British poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. Myers' work on psychical research and his ideas about a "subliminal self" we ...

and poet Ernest Myers.

Notes

References

* 1851 births 1894 deaths Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge 19th-century English medical doctors English male tennis players British male tennis players English cricketers Cambridge University cricketers 19th-century male tennis players 1890s suicides Suicides in Westminster {{England-tennis-bio-stub