John Henry

John Anthony Henry (11 March 1939, Greenwich, England – 8 May 2007) was a professor specialising in toxicology in the Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington. He conducted research on the health effects of cannabis, cocaine and other recreational drugs. Family and childhood Henry was born in Greenwich on 11 March 1939, and was the eldest of four surviving children. His father, Irish doctor John Aloysius Henry, was a general practitioner, and was the team doctor for Millwall Football Club, which gave the young John a lifelong interest in English Football. Education Henry was educated first at St Joseph's Academy, Blackheath, run by the De La Salle brothers. He attended Medical School at King's College London, and joined Opus Dei as a twenty-year-old medical student, there as a "numerary", a celibate member. Throughout the rest of his life, he attended mass daily, and set aside two periods a day for prayer and meditation. Illness, involvement with St. Josemaria, and recovery In 1969, while vacationing in Italy, Henry developed a throat infection which was inadequately treated, and caused kidney failure. His doctors thought it unlikely that he could survive long on dialysis, and he retired from medicine for five years. During this period, he became director of Netherhall House, a student hall in Hampstead where he was the director from 1967 until 1970.