Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part II)

The G.B.E. group of six awarded to Sir Henry Dale, Kt., ‘one of the greatest physiologists of his time’, a Nobel prize winner and a member of the Order of Merit

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, G.B.E. (Civil) Knight Grand Cross, 2nd type set of insignia, comprising sash badge, silver-gilt and enamel, and breast star, silver, with silver-gilt and enamel centre, with half-length sash, in (slightly damaged) Garrard & Co., London case of issue; Knight Bachelor’s Badge, 1st type, silver-gilt and enamel, hallmarks for London 1926; Jubilee 1935; Coronation 1937; Coronation 1953, together with Royal Society of Arts (Manufacturers and Commerce) “Gold” Albert Medal, silver-gilt, the edge officially engraved, ‘Awarded to Sir Henry Dale, O.M., G.B.E., M.D., F.R.S., For Eminent Service to Science, Particularly Physiology, 1956’, another silver-gilt Medical Society prize medal, the reverse inscribed, ‘Viro Clarissimo Henry H. Dale de Physiologia et Pharmacologia Optimo Merito’, and a set of related miniature dress medals (4), the G.B.E. sash badge with minor enamel damage to one arm and the prize medals with edge bruising, otherwise generally good very fine (12) £2500-3000

G.B.E. London Gazette 1 January 1943.

Henry Hallett Dale, who was born in London in 1875, was educated at the Leys School, Cambridge, Trinity College, Cambridge and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. From 1904 -14 he was Director of the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories, a period that witnessed him carrying out important work into hormone research, and during the Great War, as a Director of the newly founded National Institute for Medical Research, he proved instrumental in improving the means of manufacturing essential drugs for the wounded. He was created a C.B.E. in 1919.

From 1928 to 1942 he was Director of the National Institute for Medical Research and it was during the course of this appointment, in 1936, that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, the result of his work on the nervous mechanism, work that demonstrated that nervous impulses were transmitted by chemical means. Indeed Dale’s scholarship led to such modern day remedies as tranquillisers and the idea of chemotherapy, in addition to the use of anti-histamines for hay fever and other allergy complaints, and the means of reducing high blood pressure and controlling the trembling in Parkinson’s Disease.

In the same year that he was awarded his Nobel prize, Dale was made Chariman of the Wellcome Trust, which office he occupied until 1960, but this was just one of numerous senior appointments he occupied in later life, his Presidency of the Royal Society from 1940-45, and his Chairmanship of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the War Cabinet from 1942-47, among them.

Dale, who had been knighted in 1932, was also awarded the O.M. in 1944, the year after he had been created a G.B.E. In addition, among a vast array of other honorary diplomas, degrees and Medical Society awards, he was the recipient of the German Pour Le Merite (1955), Grand Cross of the Belgian Order of the Crown (1949) and the American Medal of Freedom, with silver palm (1947). He died in July 1968, aged 93 years.

Sold with a small quantity of original documentation, including the recipient’s warrant of appointment to C.B.E., dated 1 January 1919, and a telegram of condolence addressed to Lady Todd, Dale’s daughter, from Buckingham Palace, dated 24 July 1968.