Joseph Sampson Gamgee
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Dr Joseph Sampson Gamgee, MRCS, FRSE (born 17 April, 1828, Livorno, Italy; died 18 September, 1886) was a surgeon at the Queen's Hospital (later the General Hospital) in Birmingham, England. He pioneered aseptic surgery (having once shared lodgings with Joseph Lister), and, in 1880 invented Gamgee Tissue, an absorbent cotton wool and gauze surgical dressing. He was known as Sampson Gamgee.
He gave his name (indirectly, via the tissue) to the hobbit Sam Gamgee in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
He was the son of Joseph Gamgee, a veterinary surgeon and the sibling of Dr John Gamgee, inventor and Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dick Veterinary College, Edinburgh and Dr Arthur Gamgee, Fullerian Professor of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy at The Royal Institution of Great Britain, London. Sampson's son Dr Leonard Parker Gamgee was also a renowned surgeon of Birmingham and his nephew (son of his sister Fanny Gamgee) was Prof Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860-1948).