Dr Joseph Sampson Gamgee (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 gave his name (indirectly, via the tissue) to the hobbit Sam Gamgee in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
