Herbert Aldersmith

Medecine

Educated at St Bartholomew's Hospital, Herbert Aldersmith gained a scholarship in medicine and won the Gold Medal at the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. From the age of 23 until his retirement at 65 he served as Resident Medical Officer to Christ's Hospital School, West Sussex. In 1884, Aldersmith founded the "Medical Officers of Schools Association", which today (through various historic amalgamations with other associations) is known as the Metropolitan Association of Medical Officers of Health. Later he published his first book Ringworm: its diagnosis and treatment, which was one of the earliest medical works on ringworm and received favourable reviews in medical journals. From 1891 he also authored several early works on British Israelism as well as having read a paper before the president, Court of governors and members of Sion College, London, entitled "The great distinction between the "House of Judah" (the Jews) and the "House of Israel" in these "latter days" (1896).

Pyramidology

From 1910 until his death, Aldersmith worked in close correspondence with the Scottish engineer David Davidson on a pyramidology book, which was later published six years after his death entitled The Great Pyramid: Its Divine Message (1924). Aldersmith believed that the internal passages of the Great Pyramid of Giza contain a chronology in numerlogical and metrological form which detail the date of the second coming and End Times, as well as prophecies and a timeline relating to the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic kindred peoples.

According to Aldersmith the end of the world would be on May 29, 1928, but Davidson remained very skeptical about this date and after it passed in a revised 1940 edition of his book, he dated what he considered to be the "Armageddon Climax" to 1953. Later British Israelites pointed out that in 1953 President Harry S. Truman announced to the United States that the hydrogen bomb had been developed and therefore claimed Davidson's pyramidology was factually prophetic.