Stanhope Templeman Speer (20 October 1823 – 9 February 1889) was a British physician and mountain climber.
A physician, medical practitioner, medical doctor, or simply doctor is a professional who practises medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining, or restoring health through the study, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease, injury, and other physical and mental impairments. Physicians may focus their practice on certain disease categories, types of patients and methods of treatment—known as specialities—or they may assume responsibility for the provision of continuing and comprehensive medical care to individuals, families, and communities—known as general practice. Medical practice properly requires both a detailed knowledge of the academic disciplines underlying diseases and their treatment—the science of medicine—and also a decent competence in its applied practice—the art or craft of medicine.
Mountaineering is the set of activities that involves ascending mountains. Mountaineering-related activities include traditional outdoor climbing, hiking, skiing, and traversing via ferratas. Indoor climbing, sport climbing and bouldering are usually considered mountaineering as well.
Speer worked at Brompton Hospital in London and specialized in treating chest diseases. He has been described as the first physician to describe mountain sickness in a medical journal. [1]
Altitude sickness, the mildest form being acute mountain sickness (AMS), is the negative health effect of high altitude, caused by rapid exposure to low amounts of oxygen at high elevation. Symptoms may include headaches, vomiting, tiredness, trouble sleeping, and dizziness. Acute mountain sickness can progress to high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) with associated shortness of breath or high altitude cerebral edema (HACE) with associated confusion. Chronic mountain sickness may occur after long term exposure to high altitude.
In 1844 he was the first man to climb the Mittelhorn, the highest summit of the Wetterhorn in Switzerland. [2]
The Mittelhorn is a peak in the Swiss Alps close to the village of Grindelwald. It is the highest of the three composing the Wetterhorner massif.
The Wetterhorn is a peak in the Swiss Alps towering above the village of Grindelwald. Formerly known as Hasle Jungfrau, it is one of three summits on a mountain named the "Wetterhörner", the highest of which is the Mittelhorn and the lowest and most distant the Rosenhorn. The latter peaks are mostly hidden from view from Grindelwald.
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a country situated in western, central and southern Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The sovereign state is a federal republic bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning a total area of 41,285 km2 (15,940 sq mi). While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, the Swiss population of approximately 8.5 million people is concentrated mostly on the plateau, where the largest cities are to be found: among them are the two global cities and economic centres Zürich and Geneva.
Speer was a spiritualist and friend of the medium William Stainton Moses. In the 1870s, Moses resided with Speer and his wife and tutored their son. Speer was an early member of The Ghost Club and the Society for Psychical Research. [3] [4] [5] [6] He was a member of the British National Association of Spiritualists. [7]
William Stainton Moses (1839–1892) was an English cleric and spiritualist medium.
The Ghost Club is a paranormal investigation and research organization, founded in London in 1862. It is widely believed to be the oldest such organization in the world. Since 1862 it has primarily investigated ghosts and hauntings.
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 conduct organised scholarly research into human experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models." It does not, however, since its inception in 1882, hold any corporate opinions: SPR members assert a variety of beliefs with regard to the nature of the phenomena studied.
His son Charlton Templeman Speer who became a famous composer, was also a spiritualist.
Charlton Templeman Speer also known as Charlton T. Speer was an English composer and spiritualist.
