The IVF Museum · Pioneers · Samuel Buckley

Samuel Buckley was a Manchester doctor whose working life centred on the north of the city and on the health of women and children. He trained at Owens College and the Royal School of Medicine in Manchester, qualified in 1868, became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1873, and later took his MB and MD from the University of London.

After serving as resident medical officer at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, he became honorary physician to the Manchester Northern Hospital for Diseases of Women and Children, and was for a time Medical Officer of Health for the Crumpsall Union and Prestwich Rural Districts. He was president of the North of England Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society and of other Manchester medical societies.

His place in the history of IVF comes from Walter Heape's paper of 1890. Heape closed it by thanking "Mr. Samuel Buckley, M.D. (Lond.), F.R.C.S. (Eng.), of Manchester, who has most kindly given me his valuable assistance in the necessary operative portion of the experiment." The first recorded transfer of a mammalian embryo was a partnership: the zoologist designed the experiment, and the Manchester surgeon assisted with the operation. Buckley's work in Prestwich, where Heape's family lived and kept a private laboratory, is one reason the historian John Biggers concluded that the experiment was done there rather than in Cambridge.

Plarr's Lives of the Fellows records that a local newspaper remembered his quiet, genial temperament and his courtesy, and he loved fishing, above all in the west of Ireland. He died at his home in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, on 30 May 1910.

Life and work

• Owens College and the Royal School of Medicine, Manchester
• LSA and MRCS 1868; FRCS 1873; MB (London) 1880; MD 1885; MRCP 1894
• Resident Medical Officer, Manchester Royal Infirmary, 1870 to 1872
• Honorary, later Consulting, Physician, Manchester Northern Hospital for Diseases of Women and Children
• Medical Officer of Health, Crumpsall Union and Prestwich Rural Districts
• President, North of England Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society

Key papers

1. Heape W. Preliminary note on the transplantation and growth of mammalian ova within a uterine foster-mother. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 1890;48:457 to 458. ReadBuckley is thanked on page 458 for the operation.
2. Buckley S. Case of strychnine poisoning successfully treated by atropine. Edinburgh Medical Journal 1873;19:211 to 213. ReadAn early paper, written while he was medical officer at the Prestwich Workhouse.

See also Walter Heape and the Pioneers wing.

The IVF Museum · Pioneers · Samuel Buckley
Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Undergoing peer review. Corrections are warmly welcomed.