Thomas Gillman Moorhead, MD, FRCPI was born on the 15th of October 1878 in Benburb County Tyrone to parents Dr William Robert Moorhead and Amelia Davis Gillman. He grew up in Bray in County Wicklow as this is where his father practiced Medicine. He was educated at Aravon School and later attended Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 1901. He earned his MD in 1902, became a member of the RCPI in 1905 and became a Fellow of the RCPI in 1906. He undertook postgraduate education in Vienna. His brothers William St Leger and James Herbert also became physicians. Like his predecessor Walter George Smith, he was a demonstrator in anatomy in TCD and became the Chief Demonstrator in 1901. He was the Assistant Physician in Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital 1902, Visiting Physician in the Royal City of Dublin Hospital between 1903 and 1921 and was the co-editor of the Dublin Journal of Medical Science from the year 1907. He was elected as the seventh King’s Professor of Materia Medica and Pharmacy in TCD in 1921. He held this position until 1925, when he resigned to assume the role of Regius Professor of Physic, in Trinity College. He held this position until 1956. He was also Chair of Medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI) briefly in 1916 and 1917. 

Dr. Moorhead served in WW1, joining the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was posted to Alexandria in Egypt in 1915 and faced a large outbreak of ‘camp jaundice’ or Hepatitis A. He reported his experience in the Dublin Journal of Medical Science in 1916. In the year 1926, while in London he fell at Euston Station and suffered bilateral retinal detachment resulting in permanent total blindness, however, he continued his work, undeterred. He authored “A Sketch of the History of Medicine in Ireland” and “A Short History of Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital (1942)”. 

He was President of the RCPI between 1930 and 1933 and again in 1934. He was also President of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland (1930), President of the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland (1932) and President of the British Medical Association (1933).

He was Married to Mai Beatrice Quinn in 1907. Sadly, Quinn passed away in 1935, and he later married Sheila Gwynn in 1938, the daughter of Stephen Gwynn, MP. He had no children from either marriage. Moorhead died on the 3rd of August 1960, aged 81 and is buried at Dean’s Grange Cemetery in Dublin

Thomas Gillman Moorhead MD, FRCPI
Elected 8 February, 1921.