EC 1/b

SIDNEY MAYNARD SMITH (1875-1928). C.B., M.B. (Lond.), F.R.C.S. (Eng.). - Consultant Surgeon to St Mary’s Hospital and the Second and Fifth Armies.

“As Consulting Surgeon to the Fifth Army in 1916, he was chiefly responsible for the treatment of the wounded during the great battles of Passchendaele.”

Plarr’s Lives of the Fellows. Royal College of Surgeons (1928).

Sidney Maynard Smith (1875-1928) [Epsom College 1889-1893. Entrance Scholarship. Ann Hood Exhibition. Hockey XI] was the son of W. H. Smith of the Admiralty. In 1893, he won an entrance scholarship to St Mary’s Hospital and after a distinguished student career qualified M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (Eng.) in 1898. Shortly after this he was appointed house-surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital before serving in the South African War as a civil surgeon with the 3rd Battalion Welsh regiment, winning the Queen’s medal and two clasps. On returning to London he passed the F.R.C.S. examination (1902), graduated M.B., B.S. with honours (1905), and was appointed demonstrator of anatomy in St Mary’s Hospital Medical School. He won a great reputation as a teacher and, in 1906, was appointed surgeon with charge of out-patients at St Mary’s Hospital and assistant surgeon to the Victoria Hospital for Children. Sidney Maynard Smith had a brilliant record of service during the First World War. In 1914 he was appointed Surgeon-in-Chief to the St John Ambulance Brigade Hospital, and after devoting himself with the greatest energy to its organisation and equipment, proceeded to France with the hospital in 1915, holding the rank of Major in the R.A.M.C. At Etaples, the St John Hospital soon became famous for the outstanding perfection of its organisation, and very many surgical cases were received. The British Medical Journal recorded that: “never was Maynard Smith’s brilliant genius as an organiser shown to better effect than in the minutely detailed arrangements he made for dealing with the work of the St John Hospital. His skill gained him a great reputation in France, and led to his appointment of consulting surgeon to the Fifth Army in 1916, with the rank of Colonel A.M.A.” In his new position he was largely responsible for the surgical arrangements for dealing with the heavy casualties of the prolonged battle of Passchendaele. He also distinguished himself greatly during the battle of St Quentin and the retreat of the Fifth Army. Following this he was appointed consulting surgeon to the Second Army. At his own request Maynard Smith was early permitted to pay visits to the front line, to regimental first aid posts, and to advance and main dressing stations. With this he soon acquired a sound judgement as to what was essential to efficiency in the care, treatment and evacuation of the wounded. As a surgeon he was distinguished by his shrewd judgement and the thoroughness of his work. He was a splendid technician, neat and precise, and all his operations were performed after thoughtful preparation and with the most meticulous attention to details. For his services to the French Army during the fighting around Kemmel he was awarded the Croix de Guerre; for his war services he was mentioned in dispatches four times, was created C.B. and a Knight of Grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. After the Great War, Maynard Smith was appointed Consultant Surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital (1922), and other appointments held at this time included surgeon to the London Fever Hospital and consulting surgeon to the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, at Ealing. His contributions to medical literature included the section on fractures of the lower limbs on the official medical history of the war. He was a member of the Council of the Metropolitan Counties Branch of the British Medical Association, and Secretary of the Section of Diseases of Children when the B.M.A. held its annual meeting at Sheffield in 1906. He also obtained

distinction as a Freemason, being a Past Grand Deacon of the Grand Lodge of England. After the war he wrote the section on Fractures of the Lower Extremity in the Official History of the First World War. For some years he was Honorary Secretary of the Old Epsomian Club. As his war work demonstrated, Maynard Smith had a genius for organisation and, in 1927 he was largely responsible for planning the new operating theatre block at St Mary’s Hospital. Unfortunately he passed away before its completion.

GEORGE ERNEST WAUGH (1875-1940). M.A., M.D. (Cantab.), M.B. (Lond.), L.R.C.P. (Lond.), F.R.C.S. (Eng.). - Pioneer of dissection tonsillectomy.

The History of Tonsillectomy - “Two millennia of trauma, haemorrhage and controversy.”R. A. McNeill, Ulster Medical Journal (1960).

George Ernest Waugh (1875-1940) [Epsom College 1887-1894. Carr Exhibition] was the son of Dr George Waugh, a practitioner of King’s Sutton, Northamptonshire. At Epsom College he had a distinguished career, being a prefect, winning the Propert and Brande Good Conduct Prizes as well as being a member of both the Rugby XV and Cricket XI. He won a scholarship to Downing College, Cambridge, in 1894, and graduated B.A., taking First Class Honours in the Natural Science Tripos in 1897. His medical training was completed at University College Hospital where he won the Fellowe’s Medal for Clinical Medicine, and qualified M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. in 1901, and passing the London M.B. with honours in medicine and physiology during the same year. He then proceeded to the London M.D. in 1903 and the F.R.C.S. (Eng.) in 1904. As Consultant Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, George Waugh made his name as a pioneer of dissection tonsillectomy. This soon became the recognised operative procedure throughout the world. Although the operation of tonsillectomy had been practised for about two thousand years, its popularity had waxed and waned over time as the operation had achieved a dubious reputation for post-operative complications. These early operations, performed before anaesthesia had been perfected, were often followed by catastrophic haemorrhage and a significant mortality. Over the course of the past three hundred years there were great improvements in operative technique, with surgeons using, at first a snare to amputate a tonsil and, later, a guillotine for the same purpose. However, neither of these two instruments was able to remove the whole tonsil including its capsule. In 1509, Ambroise Paré, the great French surgeon stated: “This procedure [tonsillectomy by guillotine] is liable to resolve itself into physical combat between the surgeon and his patient.” In spite of this problem, tonsillectomy using the guillotine (tonsillotome) soon became the recognised operative procedure for almost one hundred years. In 1909 however, George Ernest Waugh pioneered a more refined method of tonsillectomy in which each tonsil was removed, complete with its capsule, using fine dissecting forceps and curved scissors. His results were so much better than the partial removal achieved using the guillotine that his technique rapidly became the standard procedure throughout the world. He published his account of over nine hundred cases in The Lancet. Waugh was a great opponent of the operation of guillotine tonsillectomy, stating that: “Even in highly skilled and experienced

hands, the complete removal of the tonsils by means of a guillotine is a task of such technical difficulty as to be, except in a few rare cases, quite impossible.” These words found echoes in the weekly travails of Mr Somerville Hastings, Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital who still continued to use the guillotine during the 1930s. Each Tuesday he would guillotine the tonsils of a group of children, and each Tuesday the scene in the recovery room was referred to by junior colleagues as the ‘Battle of Hastings.’ Nowadays, guillotining the tonsils is a thing of the past and the operation of choice involves fine dissection as advocated and first described by George Waugh. Full credit must be given to him for emphasizing the necessity for removing all of a diseased tonsil, and for having perfected the technique of the operation that now bears his name. Waugh was appointed Dean of the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, and spared no effort to promote the interests of the postgraduates who flocked to the hospital from all parts of the world. “As a teacher he was superb; lucid in exposition, happy in phrase, and charming in address, he had the rare gift of inspiring his audience with his own enthusiasm. No one who attended his lectures can ever forget them. Everyone who could possibly do so accompanied him on his ward rounds, which were always masterpieces of true clinical commentary and instruction.” Apart from his appointment at Great Ormond Street, Waugh was also a Consultant Surgeon at Hampstead General Hospital and the Children’s Hospital, Vincent Square, Westminster, for many years, President of the Children’s Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, as well as a member of the medical faculty of the University of London. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was ready to join the R.A.M.C. even though he was 75 years old. To a colleague, after being asked about joining at this advanced age he said: “Well, I could at least roll bandages.” In his obituary published in the British Medical Journal it was said: “George Waugh was certainly one of the great surgical leaders of our time. He was no nimble-fingered automaton. A dextrous craftsman he certainly was, with an infinite capacity for taking pains.”

SIR HAROLD ARTHUR THOMAS FAIRBANK (1876-1961). O.B.E., D.S.O., M.B., M.S. (Lond.), F.R.C.S. (Eng.), M.Ch. (Liverpool). - The doyen of Orthopaedic

Surgeons.

“My forty-five years experience of this problem leads me to emphasise the difficulty of what I would call the ‘diagnosis of prognosis.’ “

Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (1948).

When Sir Harold Arthur Thomas Fairbank (1876-1961) [Epsom College 1888-1893] published his monumental Atlas of General Affections of the Skeleton, in 1951, his reviewer wrote: “Sir Thomas Fairbank knows far more about bone disease than anyone else in the country. This not only because of his many years on the staff of an undergraduate teaching hospital and of the hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, but also because he is our orthopaedic father, whose interests we know and to whom we take all our problems and prizes.” Thomas Fairbank was the son of Dr Thomas Fairbank, a general practitioner in Windsor, and brother of Fleet Surgeon Christian Beverley Fairbank, R.N. [Epsom College 1888-1892]. He won an Entrance Scholarship to Charing Cross Hospital and, initially, intended pursuing a career in dentistry. If it had not been for the South African War, in which he served as a medical officer, he might well have become established as a West End surgeon-dentist. However, on his return from South Africa he was appointed Medical Superintendent at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. He took the F.R.C.S. (Eng.) in 1901, and proceeded M.S. (Lond.) in 1903.

Sir Thomas Fairbank was a brilliant diagnostician. On one occasion at Great Ormond Street, on hearing the peculiar and piercing scream of an infant at the other end of the out-patient hall he remarked to a colleague: “That sounds like the cry of infantile scurvy,” and so it was. While at Great Ormond Street, Fairbank decided to concentrate on orthopaedic surgery and he was later appointed orthopaedic surgeon at Charing Cross Hospital, the first London hospital to elect a surgeon for orthopaedic work only. He developed great powers of clinical observation and began to study congenital dislocation of the hip and the less commonly described skeletal disorders of children. In 1914, he visited the United States to study the development of orthopaedic surgery in Boston and New York. At the outset of the First World War Fairbank joined the R.A.M.C. and was mobilized with the 84th

Field Ambulance to Flanders and then Macedonia, before being appointed consulting surgeon to the British Salonika Force. While holding this appointment he travelled widely on bad roads and in bad weather to help many young surgeons in the Doiran and Struma areas, and was instrumental in organizing an invaluable training centre for post-operative and convalescent patients. In the Second World War such units were known as rehabilitation centres. He was awarded the D.S.O. in 1918 and appointed O.B.E. in 1919 for his services during the First World War. On his return to London, Thomas Fairbank was asked to take charge of the newly established orthopaedic department at King’s College hospital, and he soon came to be recognised as one of the leading orthopaedic surgeons in Britain. In addition to King’s College Hospital he worked as a consulting surgeon at Great Ormond Street, Queen Alexandra’s Military Hospital, Millbank, and at the Lord Mayor Treloar’s Hospital, Alton. At King’s he reorganised the orthopaedic department to make it more suitable for patients and for teaching undergraduates. He inaugurated an out-patient fracture clinic, the first in London and the second in the country and, during the Second World War he accepted the post of consultant in orthopaedic surgery to the Army and the Emergency Medical Service. The University of Liverpool made him an honorary M.Ch. (Orthopaedics) in 1939, and his work for the nation during the war was recognised by a knighthood accorded to him in 1946. Sir Thomas Fairbank was a founder member of the British Orthopaedic Association and President in 1926-1927, when he chose: “Some General Diseases of the Skeleton,” as the title of his presidential address. He was also a founder member, and later Vice-President, of the Second Congress in Bologna and Rome – of the International Society of Orthopaedic Surgery. He was President of the Orthopaedic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine and, in 1951 he was admitted to the honorary fellowship of that society. In 1932 he was elected Vice-President of the Section of Orthopaedics at the Centenary Meting of the British Medical Association. In his obituary it was written: “His main interest was in orthopaedics, and there he was the master. His diagnosis was a compound of logic with an unequalled knowledge of rare and obscure conditions; and his operating was like himself, simple, direct, and extremely efficient. When he cut two bones to fit together they fitted like the work of a master craftsman.”

SIR ALFRED BAKEWELL HOWITT (1879-1954). C.V.O., M.A., M.D. (Cantab.), M.Ch. (Cantab.), M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (Eng.), M.P. - Chairman of the

Parliamentary Medical Committee.

“He was interested for many years in the ancillary services attaching to hospital care. The profession of hospital almoners had no better friend.”

British Medical Journal (1954).

Alfred (‘Dutch’) Bakewell Howitt (1879-1954) [Epsom College 1894-1898] was the son of Dr Francis Howitt, of Heanor, Derbyshire. At Epsom College, he was head prefect, captain of the Rugby XV, a member of both the Cricket and Hockey XIs, and winner of the Wakley Prize. He went on to Clare College, Cambridge, where he took the natural science tripos in 1901, and then to St Thomas’s Hospital, as an Entrance Scholar, where he completed his medical training. He qualified M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (Eng.) in 1905, graduated M.B., B.Ch in 1906, proceeding M.D. (Cantab) in 1912. Alfred Howitt held the appointments of senior casualty officer and resident medical officer at St Thomas’s and later was resident medical officer at the West London Hospital. During the First World War he served in France as a captain in the R.A.M.C. from 1916-1919 and, on his return to England established himself as a physician in Belgrave Square. At the age of 50 Alfred Howitt turned to political life and, in 1929, twice unsuccessfully contested Preston for the Conservative Party at the general election and a subsequent by-election, receiving each time about 30,000 votes. At the general election in 1931 he was returned as Member of Parliament for Reading, where he displaced the sitting member, Mr Somerville Hastings, previously aural surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital, by a nearly two-to-one majority. He retained his seat at the next election in 1935, but retired just before the general election in 1945. It was said of him that: “he was a strong Conservative but he worked well with the little group of medical members of all parties, and was Chairman of the Parliamentary Medical Committee (1943).” In spite of all his political activities he pursued the work of his profession with ardour and distinction. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, and a frequent participator at the meetings of the Medical, Clinical, and Therapeutic Sections. He was the author of a thesis on Grave’s Disease and a number of important papers in the medical journals. The organisation of hospital almoners claimed his special interest. He was Chairman of the executive committee of the original institute, and after its amalgamation with the Hospital Almoners Association he became President of the Institute of Hospital Almoners, as it became known. In his obituary it was said: “His addresses at its annual meetings were models of presidential utterances.” In 1928 he was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, and knighted in the New Years Honours in 1945, for political and public services. He was also an Esquire of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. In 1911, he married the Hon. Dorothy, daughter of the first Lord Marchamley.

CHARLES PAGET LAPAGE (1879-1947). Ch.B., M.D. (Manchester), F.R.C.P. (Eng.). - President of the British Paediatric Association.

“Lapage was a unique character, and one will always remember his arrival at hospital in an airmen’s helmet as a precaution against draught in his car and his remarkable upright quick

walk down the corridor to his ward, hugging a sheaf of papers.”British Medical Journal (1947).

Early in his career, Charles Paget Lapage (1879-1947) [Epsom College 1894-1896] became interested in the diseases of children. He was the son of Dr C. C. Lapage, a practitioner of Nantwich, Cheshire, and father of Ronald Paget Lapage [Epsom College 1930-1933], Charles Ransome Lapage [Epsom College 1931-1935], and Dr Stephen Paget Lapage [Epsom College 1936-1941]. He received his medical training at Owen’s College, now the University of Manchester, and graduated M.B., Ch.B. in 1902, winning the John Henry Agnew Prize and the Henry Ashby Memorial Scholarship for the study of paediatrics. He was then appointed resident medical officer at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, and then to the special children’s wards at St Marys Hospital, Manchester. Lapage’s teaching experience began when he was medical registrar at the Manchester Royal Infirmary and medical tutor to the Hulme Hall of residence. In 1905 he was awarded the M.D. with commendation, having put forward a thesis on mentally retarded children, at that time grouped under the title ‘feeble-minded.’ Following the death of Dr Henry Ashby, Senior Physician at Manchester Children’s Hospital, Charles Lapage was appointed honorary physician at that hospital in 1908, and subsequently to St Mary’s Hospital, Manchester, where he took charge of the children’s wards. His interest in mental incapacity in children continued with the publication of his book Feeblemindedness in Children of School Age in 1911, with a second edition in 1920. This book was at the time the standard work on this emotive subject. He inaugurated and ran a clinic at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital for the diagnosis and treatment of children with mental and speech defects by non-medical teachers with special qualifications, and this was one of the first clinics of its kind in this country. Before the First World War, Charles Lapage was a Captain in the University Territorial Training Corps and he was soon appointed as its commanding officer. During the war he served with the 2nd Western General Hospital and, in 1918, went abroad as a major in the R.A.M.C. with the 57th General Hospital to France, where he was mentioned in dispatches. After the War he established himself as one of Manchester’s foremost paediatricians. At the University of Manchester he was appointed Lecturer on Diseases of Children in 1909, and Reader in Diseases of Children from 1931-1947. He was President of the Manchester Medical Society and of the Section of Diseases of Children of the Royal Society of Medicine. He was one of the original members of the British Paediatric Association and it was said that he had never missed a meeting. His membership culminated in his election as its President in 1929 and, in 1932, he was appointed Vice-President of the Section of Diseases of Children at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association. As a student, Charles Lapage was a prominent runner and rugby footballer. He listed the recreations of his middle life as walking in the mountains, golf, swimming and tennis. Indeed, he cultivated his taste for strenuous exercise to the end of his life and he was proud of his achievement of climbing every peak over 2,500 feet in England and Wales at the age of 65. In 1945, a paediatric prize was founded at the University of Manchester in Lapage’s memory.

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOHN CUNNINGHAM (1881-1968). C.I.E., B.A., B.Ch., M.D. (Edin.), F.R.S. (Edin.). - Director of the Pasteur Institute at Kasauli, India.

“He was a great disciplinarian, and we, his colleagues, used to interpret his M.D. to mean “master of details.”

British Medical Journal (1968).

John Cunningham (1881-1968) [Epsom College 1895-1899] was the eldest son of Professor D. J. Cunningham, F.R.S., who held the Chair of Anatomy at the University of Edinburgh. He entered Epsom College from Loretto and, in his final year became a prefect and Captain of the Rugby XV. He completed his medical training at Trinity College, Dublin, qualifying M.B., B.Ch., B.A.O. in 1903. In 1905, he obtained a commission in the Indian Medical Service and proceeded M.D. the following year. After preliminary training at Poona and after completing two years of military service he was transferred to the research department of the Government of India. It was there that he first saw the opportunities for preventive medicine, especially in bacteriology, and after working for several years in provincial laboratories, he was appointed Assistant Director of the Bombay Bacteriological Laboratory in 1910. From then onwards he pursued a distinguished career in the pursuit and direction of preventive medicine. In 1912, he became Assistant Director of the Central Research Institute of India, where apart from a period of military service on the Indian North-West Frontier (1915-1916), for which he was mentioned in dispatches, he remained until 1918. In 1919 Cunningham was appointed Director of the King Institute of Preventive Medicine in Madras, and this became an active centre of research under his direction. The mass production of glycerinated calf vaccine lymph against smallpox, was started by him. With his great interest in public health problems, particularly in water and sewage purification, he constructed experimental filter stations, the first of their kind in India. In 1926 he was appointed Director of the Pasteur Institute at Kasauli – the first, and one of the most important of the institutes to be established in India in connection with the suppression of rabies, and he was greatly involved in the preparation of anti-rabies vaccine. During his time at the Pasteur Institute his research into bacillary dysentery was of a pioneering nature. John Cunningham also found time to act as general organizing secretary of the 7 th

Congress of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine. In 1928 he was appointed C.I.E., in recognition of his services to preventive medicine, and the following year he returned to Edinburgh on his appointment as the first medical superintendent of the new Astley Ainslie Hospital. It was during this period that he set up at the hospital the first school of occupational therapy in Scotland. He wrote widely on rehabilitation and occupational therapy and was a strong negotiator in securing recognition for this new profession with the Department of Health for Scotland. From 1946-1965 he was Vice-President of the Scottish Association of Occupational Therapists, and in 1966, he was elected President as a mark of the association’s gratitude to him as the principal pioneer of occupational therapy in Scotland. In 1954, he was elected honorary fellow of the World Federation of Occupational Therapists and, shortly before this, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

SIR PENDRIL CHARLES VARRIER-JONES (1883-1941). M.A. (Cantab.), M.R.C.S. (Eng.), F.R.C.P. (Lond.). - Pioneer in the treatment of Tuberculosis and

Founder and Director of the Papworth Village Settlement.

“When we take an x-ray film we are filled with wonder at the complications of nodes and shadows, not sufficiently realising that what we are gazing at is the picture of past battles,

filled-in trenches, exploding mine-craters and the like. What we imagine we see, but do not, is the advancing army of disease.”

Sir Pendril Varrier-Jones (c. 1925).

As the newly appointed Tuberculosis Officer for Cambridgeshire, Pendril Charles Varrier-Jones (1883-1941) [Epsom College 1896-1896], with the rare insight of a pioneer, saw tuberculosis as a social and economic problem as well as a medical one, and immediately began to seek a solution. He was the son of Dr Charles Morgan Jones, a physician of substance and some style, in Glamorgan, who went about his practice in a smartly painted trap driven by a man in livery. From Epsom College, Pendril Varrier-Jones entered St John’s College, Cambridge as a foundation scholar, before completing his medical training at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. At Cambridge he graduated with First Class Honours in the Natural Science Tripos. He qualified M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (Eng.) in 1910. Later research work at Cambridge with Professor Sir G. S. Woodhead on bovine tuberculosis formed the basis for his future career. Within a short time he had published two important reports: Industrial Colonies and Village Settlements for the Consumptive (1920) and Papworth: Administrative and Economic Problems in Tuberculosis (1925). He was quick to see that treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis in those days, when two thirds of all patients admitted with disease beyond the early stage were dead within five years, was but a half-way house to death, and that advice on after-care was useless unless applied in sheltered conditions of home and work. Although treatment in a sanatorium usually arrested the disease, exposure to the strain and stress of competition with healthy labour often led to a breakdown so that the patient’s last state was worse than his first. In 1915, with this in mind, Varrier-Jones opened a village settlement at Bourn in Cambridgeshire, initially with just a single patient. In 1918, there were 18 patients and the colony moved to nearby Papworth Hall. From then onwards there was rapid expansion and the colony grew to some 1,200 residents in a hospital (housing 500 patients), hostels and cottages. Over time a surgical hospital and special unit for tuberculosis cases was built, a home for nurses with tuberculosis, research laboratories and workshops were added. The workshops were used by individuals whose disease had been halted, but who continued to remain under medical care. These workshops were equipped with modern labour-saving machinery, with annual sales amounting to well over £88,000 per annum (in 1941). Today, Papworth Hall has become world famous as a heart transplant centre where, in 2011 surgeons inserted the first artificial heart into a patient while he was awaiting a suitable donor heart. In 1920, Varrier-Jones suggested that other colonies might be established for tuberculous ex-servicemen and, following this, Preston Hall, near Maidstone, and Peamont, near Dublin were built.

It was said of Pendril Varrier-Jones that he was a firm but kindly administrator with a profound knowledge of men and business affairs. His nicknames were ‘V-J’ or ‘Pendragon.’ He was indeed a ‘captain of industry’ who employed his gifts solely for the benefit of the consumptive worker. He was forever planning new departures to meet the existing situation. Shortly before his death he was planning to establish a school of tuberculosis at Papworth. “If necessary,” he wrote, “I shall start with one student.” At the time of his death he had reached the summit of his career and had received the recognition that he so thoroughly deserved. He was knighted in 1931, was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1934, delivered the Mitchell Lecture on the subject of village settlements for the tuberculous in 1927, and was awarded the Weber-Parkes Prize for his studies in tuberculosis in 1939. He would have been the Government’s representative at the meeting in Berlin arranged for September 1939 of the International Union against Tuberculosis, but war intervened. In his obituary it is stated: “[His sudden death] deprives the profession of a great authority whose work, though now widely recognized, he did not regard as nearly complete. Endowed with great power of work, enthusiasm, and sane imagination, he had a genius for organisation.” A distinguished colleague, Sir Arthur McNalty, wrote: “I have never known a man of greater single purpose. He devoted his rare holidays for the most part to visits abroad in order to study foreign problems of tuberculosis. He was ever planning new departures to meet the existing situation. Varrier-Jones’s place in the history and development of anti-tuberculosis work is a very high one, and mankind has lost one of its benefactors.” The village settlement at Papworth has become his memorial. The Duke of Kent has been its president since 1935, and no less than six members of the Royal Family have been its patrons.

SIR JOSEPH FRANCIS ENGLEDUE PRIDEAUX (1884-1959). Kt., C.B.E., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (Eng.).

“His abounding good humour and his fund of reminiscences – especially of his seven years as a medical officer in Fiji – made him a delightful companion who could while away the

tedium of the longest journey or enliven the dullest occasion.”British Medical Journal (1959).

Joseph Francis Engledue Prideaux (1884-1959) [Epsom College 1893-1902. Carr Exhibition] was the son of Dr T. E. P. Prideaux of Wellington, Somerset. He was awarded an Entrance Scholarship to University College Hospital, qualifying M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. in 1908. In the following year he joined the Colonial Medical Service and, for seven years was a Government Medical Officer in Fiji, before returning to England to enter the R.A.M.C. for service during the First World War. In 1921 he was invited to join the medical staff of the newly created Ministry of Pensions, and was given specialist duties at headquarters. During the war he was able to give close study to the problems of neurasthenia and other nervous disorders such as ‘shell shock,’ and he continued this study while at the Ministry. The Ministry was faced with the many difficulties of diagnosis and treatment of the thousands of cases of neurasthenia which had emerged from the war. Francis Prideaux approached this problem as a psychiatrist, and his methods proved highly successful. In 1936, he was appointed a member of an inter-departmental committee set up by the Home Secretary, the Minister of Health, and the Secretary of State for Scotland “to enquire into the arrangements at present in operation with a view to the restoration of the working capacity of persons injured by accidents, and to report as to what improvements or developments are desirable, and what steps are expedient to give effect thereto, regard being had to the recommendations made in the report issued by the British Medical association in 1935, on fractures.”

Francis Prideaux’s outstanding work on neurosis and psychiatry between the two wars is very well known. In 1939, he took over the direction of the Ministry’s hospital services, which had to be rapidly extended to meet the ever-increasing demand. This urgent and exacting task provided full scope for his great administrative ability. His achievements were many, but, in particular, his name will be associated with the building of Stoke Mandeville Hospital as a spinal injuries centre, and with that bold adventure in the rehabilitation of the paraplegic patient, the Duchess of Gloucester House at Isleworth, Middlesex. Francis Prideaux had a receptive mind open to new ideas and new methods. He encouraged research in every possible way, especially into the design and construction of artificial limbs and appliances. Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, Francis Prideaux was made Director of Medical Services in the Ministry of Pensions, and in 1942 he became Deputy Director-General. In 1947, he succeeded Sir Walter Haward as Director-General, and held office until he retired in 1949.

PROFESSOR FREDERICK JASPER ANDERSON (1886-1957). C.I.E., M.C., I.M.S., M.B., B.S. (Lond.), L.R.C.P. (Lond.), F.R.C.S. (Eng.) – Professor of

Surgery, University of Calcutta.

“He had two ruling passions in life - surgery and racing. For years he owned and raced a string of horses in Calcutta with considerable success.”

British Medical Journal (1957).

Frederick Jasper Anderson (1886-1957) [Epsom College 1898-1901] was the son of Dr A. J. Anderson of Blackpool, Lancashire. He received his medical education at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, graduating M.B., B.S. in 1912. In the same year he passed high into the Indian Medical Service. During the First World War he saw service in France, Belgium, Mesopotamia and Egypt. He was twice mentioned in dispatches, and was awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry in action. He remained on semi-active service until 1921 when he returned to England and obtained the F.R.C.S. in 1922. In 1923 he was selected for civil employment in the Madras Presidency and held various appointments there until 1928, when he was appointed Principal and Professor of Surgery at Andhra Medical College, Vizagapatam. In 1934 he was transferred to Calcutta as Professor of Surgery, a post that he held until retirement in 1941, when he was immediately re-employed in the same capacity for the duration of the Second World War. He was awarded the C.I.E. in 1939. In his obituary it was written that Jasper Anderson: “combined boldness and dexterity as an operator with great surgical wisdom and judgement – a combination that brought him a reputation that was far from local, and patients from all over India. He was a good teacher who preferred the bedside and the operating theatre to the lecture-room for this purpose, and many of the leading Bengal surgeons received their first impetus and encouragement from him…. His brusque, abrupt manner concealed, from those who knew him slightly or whom he considered bogus, an essential kindliness which his patients and his students soon discovered. He did not suffer fools gladly, and he hated any form of pose.”

EDWARD WING TWINING (1887-1939). M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (Eng.), D.M.R.E. (Cantab.), F.R.C.P. (Lond.). - The ‘Father’ of British Neuroradiology.

“Twining had a whimsical notion of a ‘thinkograph.’ This was to be a machine that typed out in masterly English all one’s great sweeping thoughts while lying in a ath.”

Professor Ian Isherwood. American Journal of Neuroradiology (1995).

Edward Wing Twining (1887-1939) [Epsom College 1897-1905. Carr Exhibition] came from a medical family, both his grandfather, uncle, and father, Dr A. H. Twining, being in practice at Salcombe in Devon, and he was the brother of Dr Daniel Owen Twining [Epsom College 1895-1903]. He had a distinguished career at Epsom College, being a prefect, member of the Rugby XV, and winner of the Engledue, Brande, Watts Science and Modern History Prizes. It was while he was a medical student on a surgical unit that he contracted osteomyelitis from an infected needle and this crippling condition delayed his qualification and handicapped him throughout his life. He eventually completed his medical training at University College Hospital where he qualified M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (Eng.) in 1913. He died in 1939, as a direct result of the infection, tragically at a time without recourse to modern antibiotics, and at the peak of an outstanding career. At the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 Twining was rejected as physically unfit for service in the R.A.M.C., but in 1915, he was placed in charge of an x-ray and electrotherapeutic unit at Netley Hospital, Southampton. It was there that he began his lifelong interest in diagnostic radiology. After the War Edward Twining underwent a period of study at St Thomas’s Hospital and successfully passed the newly instituted University of Cambridge Diploma in Medical Radiology and Electrotherapeutics (D.M.R.E.) in 1923. This was the first formally established radiological qualification in the world. Twining was the most outstanding candidate of the examination and so impressed the examiners that it is recorded that “the viva became a friendly talk,” and afterwards he was invited to join the honorary staff of Manchester Royal Infirmary to fill a specially created post in the X-Ray Department. In 1928 he was appointed lecturer in radiology to the University of Manchester. At that time the Manchester Royal Infirmary had little money with which to purchase new equipment. When the authorities were deterred by the cost of £ 800 for an x-ray tomographic unit, Twining simply designed and built an add-on attachment to a standard piece of equipment at the cost of £ 1. This ingenious device enabled tomography to be applied widely in many x-ray departments around the country and in many clinical situations, not least in the investigation of cranial and spinal disorders. It was from this that he made important and ground-breaking x-ray studies of the cerebral ventricular system. When the Christie Hospital and the Holt Radium Institute were being rebuilt, Twining was invited to become its honorary radiologist and to advise the Board on the lay-out of a new x-ray department. In 1936 he was awarded a Hunterian Professorship at the Royal College of Surgeons and he immediately gained international recognition as a pioneering neuroradiologist. In preparation for his Hunterian Oration he went to the Manchester Royal Infirmary for two hours or so every Monday evening for nine months with neurological

friends discussing and working at the problems of imaging the cerebral ventricles. His address was illustrated by rotating lantern slides, which he had made himself, containing mercury within hollow ventricular shapes to simulate the movement of air through the ventricular system during the investigative technique of pneumoencephalography. These slides, which made such an impression on the audience, were on display again in the historical exhibition during the Röntgen Centenary Congress held in 1995. Edward Twining wrote numerous papers published in the medical journals but his great section on diseases of the chest, which occupied almost an entire volume of the three-volume Textbook of Radiology (1938) edited by British authors, is considered to be the best account of radiology of the respiratory system ever written. Shortly before his death, Twining was chosen as President-elect of both the Faculty of Radiologists (later to become the Royal College) and the Section of Radiology of the Royal Society of Medicine. At the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association in Manchester in 1929 he was Secretary of the Section of Radiology and Radiotherapeutics, and at the Belfast Meeting in 1937 he was Vice-President of this Section. His name is commemorated by the Twining Medal of the Royal College of Radiologists and by the Presidential Medal of the British Society of Neuroradiologists. Experienced visitors from over-seas who saw him at his research work expressed their opinion that he was one of the best of the younger radiologists that they had met, and time has shown that they were not in error. In his obituary Edward Twining is described as “the father of British neuroradiology.” There is no doubt that the work in which he took the greatest pride and which made the greatest contribution to medicine was that on the brain and spine, in particular his studies of the cerebral ventricular system. For this he gained international recognition as a pioneer neuroradiologist.

MELVILLE DOUGLAS MACKENZIE (1889-1972). C.M.G., M.B., B.S. (Lond.), M.D. (Lond.), D.T.M., D.T.H. (Cantab.), D.P.H. (Durham). - Chairman of the

Executive Board and Director of Epidemiology, the Ministry of Health.

“He learned to play the pipes from a night watchman at Euston Station and was often to be seen pacing the streets of north London playing stirring Scottish marches.”

British Medical Journal (1973).

Melville MacKenzie (1889-1972) [Epsom College 1904-1907] was the son of Dr Frederick Lumsden MacKenzie, M.D., a practitioner at Huddersfield. He passed out top in the 1st M.B. examination in 1907 and was awarded an Entrance Scholarship to St Bartholomew’s Hospital where he graduated M.B., B.S. in 1911. In 1916 he was released for war service as a Captain in the R.A.M.C. He was posted to Mesopotamia where he encountered cholera, plague and typhus, and was mentioned in dispatches for his work in controlling these epidemics. After the war he took diplomas in public health and tropical medicine, and proceeded M.D. (Lond.) (1920). He then became assistant port health officer at Liverpool, but gave up this appointment in 1921 to join a unit in the Volga Valley as a senior medical officer with the Nansen Russian Famine Relief Administration, being primarily engaged in the control of typhus. In 1926 he joined the Ministry of Health and in 1928, he was invited to join the Health Organisation of the League of Nations and took part in advisory missions to Greece, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and many other countries to help with problems such as dengue fever, congenital syphilis, and malaria. From 1931-1933 he went as Special Commissioner of the Council of the League of Nations, to pacify and disarm native tribes - the Kru (Kroo) peoples – and fix new boundaries in Liberia. In 1936 he was appointed Acting Director of the Epidemiological Bureau of the League of Nations in Singapore, and visited Bangkok to advise on control of a cholera epidemic. Early in 1939 he

returned to the Far East as special commissioner to co-ordinate the technical assistance given to China. He was at Chungking at the height of the bombing in the Sino-Japanese war and also made a hazardous journey along the Burma Road, living in primitive conditions. At the outbreak of the Second World War, in 1940, he returned to London from Geneva and became principal medical officer in charge of the London area. Towards the end of the war he returned to international health as Chairman of the European Health Committee of UNRRA and, in 1946, was United Kingdom Delegate with Plenipotentiary Powers, to the World Health Conference in New York. At this time he was the author of Medical Relief in Europe (1944), for a series on postwar medical problems, and this proved to be the standard textbook for relief workers. He pointed out that in the aftermath of the last war more people died from preventable diseases and starvation than were killed in the war itself. Before the war there was a very effective system of notifying major epidemic disease from every country in the world, and he called for the reconstitution of this inter-Government information service. In 1947 he was appointed C.M.G. Melville MacKenzie was the chief United Kingdom delegate to the first six assemblies of the World Health Organisation and Chairman of its Executive Board in 1953-1954. While at the Ministry of Health in 1954 he visited Trinidad to advise on an outbreak of poliomyelitis, and later visited the Trucial States to advise on public health and hospitals. His last assignment, just after retirement, was to the earthquake area of Agadir, Morocco. In retirement he was an ardent hill walker and passed many happy hours in London exploring the by-ways of the City.

OSWALD GAYER MORGAN (1889-1981). M.A., M.B., M.Ch. (Cantab.), F.R.C.S. (Eng.) – Distinguished Ophthalmic Surgeon who was President of the

Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom.

“Courteous to all, never rushed, always ready to give advice and encouragement, tolerant even when things went wrong, slow to blame and quick to forgive.”

Sir John Conybeare, British Journal of Ophthalmology (1981).

Oswald Gayer Morgan (1889-1981) [Epsom College 1902-1907] was the son of Dr W. P. Morgan of Seaford, Sussex. At Epsom College he was a member of both the Cricket and Hockey XIs. He received his medical education at Clare College, Cambridge and Guy’s Hospital. From 1914 to 1918 he served in the R.A.M.C. with the rank of Captain, as the surgeon in charge of the Duchess of Sutherland’s Ambulance Unit in France. The unit was captured at Namur and he was taken prisoner, but he escaped and returned to England. After reorganisation he reopened the unit in France. In 1920 he obtained his Master of Surgery (M.S.) and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (F.R.C.S.). In 1924 he was appointed Ophthalmic Surgeon at Guy’s Hospital and soon became the Senior Ophthalmic Surgeon. He was Chairman of the Ophthalmic Group Committee of the British Medical

Association for 24 years, and Vice-Chairman of the National Ophthalmic Treatment Board Association for 30 years. He was also Vice-President of the British Medical Association, President of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom, and Doyne Memorial Lecturer and medallist at the Oxford Ophthalmological Congress (1958). Gayer Morgan was a patently selfless individual whose professional interest apart from his work, in which he was remarkably proficient, was the body politic. His chairmanship of the Ophthalmic Group Committee, and his support for the opticians and their claims at a time when unenforceable lines of demarcation were under contemplation, were a measure of his belief that the balance of group interests was a major factor in maintaining the health of the ophthalmic community - and how right he proved to be. It was said of Oswald Gayer Morgan that “With the death of Sir Stewart Duke-Elder he became the doyen of the ophthalmic profession in the United Kingdom.”

BRIGADIER HUGH LLEWELLYN GLYN HUGHES (1892-1973). C.B.E., D.S.O., M.C., Q.H.P., R.A.M.C., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (Eng.), F.R.C.G.P.

The First Allied Medical Officer to enter the Belsen Concentration Camp after the Second World War.

“On four separate days he showed an utter contempt for danger when collecting and tending the wounded under heavy shell fire.”

The Times (1944).

‘Hughie’ Glyn Hughes (1892-1973) [Epsom College 1903-1910] was born in Swansea, South Wales, the son of Dr H. G. Hughes, but spent the first two years of his life in Ventersburg, South Africa, after his father emigrated to take up a medical post. He had an illustrious career at Epsom College where he was head prefect, Captain of the Rugby XV, the Shooting VIII and the Gymnastics VIII; and Winner of the Harvey, Wakley, Brande Good Conduct, Elocution and Brande English Prizes. Apart from these honours he won both the Ann Hood and Carr Exhibitions and then an Entrance Scholarship to University College Hospital, where he won the Fellowe’s Medal for Clinical Medicine. During the First World War he served as medical officer with the 1st

Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment, and later with the Grenadier Guards. In 1916 he was awarded the D.S.O, his citation reading: “For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during operations. He went out in broad daylight, under heavy fire, and bandaged seven wounded men in the open, lying out in an exposed spot for one and a half hours. At nightfall he led a party through a heavy barrage and brought the seven men back.” Within four months he was awarded a Bar to his D.S.O. Hughes was heavily decorated during the First World War, and before its end he was awarded the Military Cross, the Croix de Guerre avec palme, and was several times mentioned in dispatches. After the war he returned to work as a general practitioner in Chagford, Devon. During the Second World War Brigadier Hughes became Deputy Director of Medical services to the Eighth Corps and the Second Army, and became the Chief Medical Officer in the advance. On 15th of April, 1945, while attached to the 11th Armoured division he became the first Allied Medical Officer to enter the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. As The

Lancet recorded: ‘His striking appearance – a piercing eye amid strong features – and his capacity for quick and confident decision made him a natural leader, commanding loyalty and respect from subordinates…He loved action, and if it didn’t come to him he sought it.’ Hughes took control of the camp and immediately set about controlling the two main issues that faced him – the control of disease, after an outbreak of typhus, and the distribution of food. He also took control of the local hospital, removing the German patients to treat his new charges. In September 1945, Brigadier Hughes was one of the main witnesses for the prosecution in the Belsen Trial. For his actions at Belsen, he received the Order of St John of Jerusalem and the Legion d’Honneur. He also received a second Bar to his D.S.O., for actions during the attempted relief of Arnhem from the South, earlier in the campaign, where as the most senior surviving officer, he took command of the tanks. In 1945 he was awarded a

C.B.E. At the end of the Second World War Hughes was appointed Commandant of the R.A.M.C. Depot at Crookham, with his final military post being Inspector of Training. After leaving the forces in 1947 Hughes took up the first of his senior medical administrative posts, when he became the Senior Medical Officer of the South East Metropolitan Hospital Board. In this position he played a prominent role in the administration of the newly created National Health Service, and again in 1952 with the formation of the Royal College of General Practitioners. He held several titles before his retirement, including

Honorary Physician to H.M. the Queen, President of the Harveian Society and Medical Officer to the British Red Cross Society. Outside his professional career, Hughes was a very keen sportsman, with his main interest being rugby football. At Epsom College he was captain of the Rugby XV and he later played for Blackheath RFC. In 1913 he was selected to play for the Barbarians against Cardiff and Swansea. He played a total of 20 games for the Barbarians over nine tours, scoring a try against Newport in 1925, and captaining the team for three matches in 1919-1920. The Official History of the Barbarian Football Club, written by Nigel Starmer-Smith, a former master at Epsom College (1967-1971), noted that ‘Hughie’ Glyn Hughes, as President: ‘remained an avuncular figure, not averse to the high jinks on a Saturday night that he himself had enjoyed in his playing days, but insistent on a certain discipline, imparted with a curt word or a piercing look, that made his feelings quite clear. One knew what was expected, and if as a player, one stepped beyond the bounds, one made sure that Hughie didn’t find out.’ Apart from the Barbarians, Hughes was Captain of the United Hospitals XV, and a member of several county sides, notably Devon, Middlesex, and London Counties. In 1927, he was selected to act as referee in the Great Britain tour of Argentina. In 1955 he was elected Secretary of the Barbarians Club and held the post when the Barbarians famously beat the 1973 touring All Blacks at Cardiff Arms Park. He died in Edinburgh just three days after he had watched the international game between Scotland and Argentina.

WILLIAM BASHALL GABRIEL (1893-1976). M.B., M.S. (Lond.), L.R.C.P. (Lond.), F.R.C.S. (Eng.). - Surgeon with an International Reputation.

“He was a large man with an imposing presence and great physical and moral strength. His operating lists were long…and were conducted with a military precision.”

British Medical Journal (1976).

William Bashall Gabriel (1893-1976) [Epsom College 1908-1912] was the son of E. E. Gabriel, engineer of Oulton Broad, Suffolk. He entered Epsom College from Monkton Combe School and was a prefect, a member of the Rugby XV, and winner of the Watts Science Prize. In 1912, he won the Freer Lucas Entrance Scholarship to the Middlesex Hospital, where he was awarded the John Murray Gold Medal and Scholarship. During the First World War he joined the Royal Navy in 1916 and served as a surgeon lieutenant on a destroyer in the Mediterranean. After the War he returned to the Middlesex Hospital as a surgical and cancer registrar, and took the F.R.C.S. in 1918 and the M.S. of London University the next year. He was then appointed Honorary Assistant Surgeon at St Mark’s Hospital where he joined the eminent surgeons Sir Gordon Gordon-Watson and Mr J.P. Lockhart-Mummery. In 1931, he was appointed Consultant Surgeon to the Royal Northern and St Mark’s Hospitals, and Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton, London. It was at St Mark’s Hospital that he won an international reputation for the surgical treatment of diseases of the rectum and colon. One of his first and most outstanding contributions was the establishment of a cancer follow-up department (1922), the first such department in the United Kingdom. It was from the wealth of information obtained from these records that the results of treatment of cancer of the rectum at St Mark’s Hospital have been assessed. In 1928 he developed a technique for excision of the rectum in cases of carcinoma. By 1952 he had performed one thousand such operations and seen the mortality rate for the operation drop from 17% to 2%. In 1932 he published his Principles and Practice of Rectal Surgery with four subsequent editions up to 1963. In his obituary it was written: “An austere and unbending manner was the expression of the way he disciplined his own life and the discipline he expected from those who worked with him. He was, and will remain, a legend for his wonderful example in total patient care. He inspired a great devotion and loyalty in generations of assistants who will be for ever grateful for the time, patience, and trouble he took to instruct and help them.”

SIR GRAHAM SELBY WILSON (1895-1987). F.R.S., M.D. (Lond.), D.P.H. (Eng.), F.R.C.P. (Lond.), Hon.F.R.C.Path., Hon. LL.D. (Glasgow), K.H.P. - Pioneer of

Medical Microbiology.

“His admirers, friends, and critics – he had all those – sometimes compared him to a schoolmaster or even a bishop. He was a bit of both at different times….he was an expert

gardener and a splendid maker of sloe gin.”British Medical Journal (1987).

Sir Graham Selby Wilson (1895-1987) [Epsom College 1911-1912. Jenks Memorial Scholarship] has two memorials; his period as Director of the Public Health Laboratory Service of England and Wales (1941-1963), and the famous four volume textbook, The Principles of Bacteriology and Immunity, written jointly with Professor W. C. Topley. This textbook is known and respected around the world, and for most microbiologists it is the first word on any subject on which they seek information. It is said that if any book can claim to be the ‘bacteriologists’ bible,’ this was it. Graham Wilson was the son of R. G. W. Wilson, a miller of Sutton, Surrey. He came from a non-medical family and after Epsom College, where he was a prominent batsman in the Cricket XI, he entered King’s College, London and Charing Cross Hospital, where he won the Governor’s Clinical Gold Medal, the University of London Gold Medal, and the Travers, Pereira, and Green Prizes. He qualified M.B., B.S. in 1916, and proceeded M.D. (Lond.) in 1919. His medical training was shortened on account of the onset of the First World War and during the period 1916-1918 he joined the R.A.M.C., serving first in the Enteric Laboratory at Kasauli, India, and then at the Royal Army Medical College, London. In 1920 he returned to Charing Cross Hospital where he joined Dr W. H. Topley in his studies of the genesis of epidemics. In 1927, he was appointed Professor of Bacteriology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and, in 1940 he was appointed Director of the Public Health Laboratory Service based in Oxford. Wilson then persuaded the health authorities in the Oxford Region to accept active laboratory collaboration in the investigation of epidemics, notably but not exclusively diphtheria. Although the great epidemics expected to sweep the country after the Second World War had not materialised, the Oxford laboratory was designated the P.H.L.S. Centre for epidemiological intelligence. Graham Wilson was instrumental in developing the phage-typing system for the diagnosis of Staphylococcus aureus infections while he was at Oxford and this system was still in use forty years later. The P.H.L.S. became a permanent feature of the National Health Service in 1948 with Wilson as its Director for the next fifteen years. During that period he presided over a considerable expansion in its size, an even larger increase in its work-load, and a remarkable growth it its scientific activities and prestige. In 1946 the P.H.L.S. comprised some 20 laboratories, most of them small, but under Graham Wilson this number trebled and the scientific value of the Service was unchallenged. Wilson read in manuscript nearly all the scientific papers written by members of the Service and extensively rewrote the

worst of these. It was said that his intellectual dominance of the P.H.L.S. could be attributed to his phenomenal knowledge of microbiology and his outstanding ability to formulate logical, clear solutions to the problems of communicable disease. These characters became apparent to all because he was a superb communicator, both orally and in print. The original purpose of the Service was to make possible the detection of bacteriological warfare if it was ever used by providing reliable information about bacterial infections in different parts of the country, and the detection of unusual patterns of infection. The job was made for Wilson and he for it. Throughout his life Graham Wilson received innumerable honours. He was a Member of Council of the Royal College of Physicians (1938-1940), Reader in Bacteriology, University of London (1927-1930), holder of the William Julius Mickle Fellowship, University of London (1939), Weber-Parkes Prize, Royal College of Physicians (1942), Milroy Lecturer, Royal College of Physicians (1948) Honorary Fellow of the American Public Health Association (1953), Honorary Fellow, Royal Society of Health (1960), Bisset Hawkins Medal, Royal College of Physicians (1956), Marjorie Stephenson Memorial Prize (1959), Stewart Prize (1960), Buchanan Medal, Royal Society (1967), Harben Gold Medal (1970), Jenner Memorial Medal (1975). He was knighted in 1962, received an honorary LL.D from Glasgow University and, in 1978 he was honoured by election as a Fellow of the Royal Society. In his obituary notice Sir Graham Wilson was described as probably the most influential British microbiologist of the 20th century. His career extended over 70 years, from his first scientific paper published as a medical student in 1917, to a study of early bacteriologists completed a few weeks before his death. In addition, he was a pioneer in the postgraduate education of medical microbiologists, an exemplar of good scientific writing and the main architect of the Public Health Laboratory Service.

RUPERT VAUGHAN HUDSON (1895-1967). L.R.C.P. (Lond.), F.R.C.S. (Eng.) – Pioneer of Thyroid Surgery.

Rupert Vaughan Hudson (1895-1967) [Epsom College 1906-1912] was the son of T. W. Hudson, surgeon of Bootle, Lancashire [Epsom College 1878-1882]. At Epsom College he was a prefect, and captain of the Rugby XV and Captain of Cricket XI. He received his medical training at the Middlesex Hospital. During the First World War he served with the Hertfordshire Yeomanry and Cavalry Reserve (1914-1918), attaining commissioned rank. After the War he was appointed lecturer in operative surgery and Honorary Consultant Surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital; and Consulting Surgeon to the Connaught Hospital, and St Saviour’s Hospital. He was an Examiner for the Universities of London and Cambridge, and a member of the committee for therapeutic trials of penicillin and streptomycin. On his appointment to the surgical staff at the Middlesex Hospital he was at first junior surgeon on Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor’s firm, where: “Gordon-Taylor made no secret of the fact that he regarded him as the most brilliant of his young men.” Rupert Vaughan Hudson specialised in thyroid surgery “He developed more delicate and refined techniques for thyroidectomy than were then current in this country, inventing in the process instruments which are still a joy to handle.” At that time Sir Charles Dodds established at the Middlesex Hospital a unit to develop

therapeutic possibilities for thyrotoxicosis [overactive thyroid disease]. Britain lagged behind the United States in the treatment of this condition and Rupert Vaughan Hudson and Douglas Robertson confirmed the American work on the necessity for an objective test to supplement clinical assessment if surgery for thyrotoxicosis was to be safe, and he gradually converted the sceptics. But Hudson’s major contribution to medicine did not come until after the Second World War. This was the publication, in 1956, of a paper which demonstrated the importance of autoimmune factors in Hashimoto’s thyroiditis – a paper which opened the gates for a flood of new investigations which profoundly influenced our understanding of disease processes. Hudson deserves his full share of credit for first seeing that an obscure and uncommon condition of apparently minor importance was worthy of intensive investigation. This achievement was not fortuitous but “the logical culmination of an attitude of a professional lifetime.” As a student at the Middlesex Hospital he had been a member of the cricket team which won the Inter Hospitals Cup in 1919 and of the hockey team which won the Cup in 1920, when he scored the winning goal. “He was a superb centre three-quarter at rugby and Vice-Captain of the United Hospitals Rugby team.”

FREDERICK CECIL WRAY CAPPS (1898-1970). O.B.E., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (Eng.), F.R.C.S. (Eng.). – Distinguished Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon.

“His popularity with his ex house-surgeons can be measured by the dinner given in his honour on his retirement from Bart’s, when no less than 54 of them gathered together to pay

their respects to him on leaving the active staff.”British Medical Journal (1970).

Frederick Cecil Wray Capps (1898-1970) [Epsom College 1913-1916] was the son of Fleet Surgeon Frederick A. Capps, who later lost his life in the Battle of Jutland. At Epsom College he was a prefect, a member of the Rugby XV, and winner of the Watts Science and Gardiner Prizes. He was awarded an Entrance Scholarship to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he won the Treasurer’s and Foster Prizes for anatomy, and the Brackenbury Scholarship in Surgery. By dint of extreme diligence he passed the 2nd Conjoint Examination in only nine months, a remarkable feat. This enabled him to join the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1917 as Surgeon Probationer, and he served the rest of the war in minesweepers and destroyers. He was then appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy and Pathology at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. He had a distinguished career as a specialist in ear, nose and throat surgery. From 1947 until 1963, he was Senior Consultant Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the Metropolitan Hospital, Willesden General Hospital, the West Suffolk Hospital and the Luton and Dunstable Hospital. He was Chairman of the Medical Council, and Vice-President of the Medical College at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. He was Consultant Laryngologist to the Royal Navy, and the London County Council, Aural Referee to the Civil Service Commission, and the Treasury Medical Service, a Member of the Court of Examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons, and President of the Section of Laryngology, and of the United Services Section at the Royal Society of Medicine. In 1957, he was Semon Lecturer and Medallist, University of London. From 1951 to 1953, he was Vice President of the British Association of Otolaryngology, and in 1949, he was General Secretary of the Fourth International Congress of Otolaryngology.

Outside of his specialty, to which he contributed many papers, he was keenly interested in sport. A man of boundless energy, he had played rugby football for Epsom College, and was a member of the St Bart’s rugby team which played against Guy’s Hospital in the final of the Hospitals Cup in the 1919-1920 Season. Tennis, squash and skiing were among his numerous later hobbies. In his obituary it was stated that “Freddie Capps, as he was affectionately known, was a man of outstanding character and ability. Apart from his professional eminence he was a man of wide interests – family, social and cultural. He had a beautiful home in Regents Park filled with antique furniture….and when abroad was an assiduous visitor to the picture galleries and museums….Few can claim to have served their hospital and the world of otolaryngology with greater devotion and loyalty than Freddie Capps and with his passing, British Otolaryngology has lost one of its most distinguished practitioners.”

DAVIS EVAN BEDFORD (1898-1978). C.B.E., M.B., B.S. (Lond.), M.R.C.S. (Eng.), M.D. (Lond.), F.R.C.P. (Lond.), F.A.C.P., Hon. M.D. (Cairo). - Distinguished

Cardiologist and Bibliophile.

“I was cured by ‘M & B,’ - Moran and Bedford.” Sir Winston Churchill. (1943).

When one of his patients asked Dr Davis Evan Bedford (1898-1978) [Epsom College 1913-1916] whether his heart attack could be cured, he quickly responded: “Cured ? If you lose your foot under a bus you don’t ask to be cured. You’ve lost the foot of your ‘eart.” Blunt, honest, possessing a deadpan humour, Evan Bedford was a highly literate man who wore tortoiseshell glasses and spoke while a cigarette stub dangled from his lower lip. He was the son of William Bedford, J.P., a flour miller from Boston, Lincolnshire. He received his medical training at the Middlesex Hospital, but the onset of the First World War meant that he had to curtail his studies. He joined the R.N.V.R. as a sub-lieutenant in destroyers and after the war returned to complete his medical studies. Two years later he was appointed as registrar to Sir Robert Arthur Young and Dr George Beaumont and it was at that time that he developed his lifelong interest in heart disease. After that he travelled to Paris where he underwent a period of study with Laubry and Gallavardin, the great French cardiologists. On his return to England he was awarded a research scholarship at the London Hospital under the eminent cardiologist Sir John Parkinson. This marked an association which later was to make the names of Parkinson and Bedford one of the best known combinations in the contemporary literature of cardiology. Together, they published a series of papers which became internationally acclaimed classics. This was at a time when cardiology was regarded as part of general medicine rather than a specialty in its own right. From his French experience Evan Bedford had learned the importance of documenting the findings on his patients and personally conducting autopsies to make clinical correlations. He was once informed that one of his patients had died the previous night. “I know,” replied Bedford, “Thank you, I know, I have his heart in my bag.” In 1926, Evan Bedford was appointed Physician at the Middlesex Hospital and the National Heart Hospital, and at that time he was one of the first cardiologists in England to

study myocardial infarction (heart attacks) which had previously been thought of as infrequent and fatal. His study in 1928 of 100 cases of coronary thrombosis was a landmark contribution to cardiology. He worked closely with the eminent heart surgeons Sir Thomas Holmes Sellors and Sir Russell Brock, and spent long periods in the operating theatre witnessing the surgical treatment of heart lesions that he had correctly diagnosed. His ability to select suitable patients for operation was legendary, and many of the successful results in such conditions as mitral valvotomy and the closure of septal defects (‘hole in the heart defects’) were due to his skills and accuracy. In December 1943, he was summoned by Lord Moran to attend Sir Winston Churchill who had developed pneumonia with cardiac complications. “[Bedford’s] presence,” wrote Lord Moran, “will keep the people at home quiet.” It also provided the Prime Minister with the idea that M & B 693, one of the new sulphonamide drugs used to treat him should be renamed ‘Moran and Bedford.’ After the war Bedford returned to his hospital duties at the Middlesex and National Heart Hospitals. His private practice soon became the largest and most distinguished in his specialty. He was at his prime and acknowledged as an international authority on the new cardiology. He was elected President of the British Cardiac Society, of which he was a co-founder, and of the European Society of Cardiology. He was Chairman of the Council of the British Heart Foundation, and Vice-President of the International Society of Cardiology. He was Consultant in Cardiology to both the Army and the R.A.F. He received an honorary M.D. from Cairo University in 1944, and was appointed C.B.E. in 1963. He edited the British Heart Journal and received honorary membership of numerous foreign cardiological societies. He delivered all the relevant, distinguished named lectures including the Harveian Oration (1968), and the Bradshaw and Lumleian Lectures. Evan Bedford’s unique and internationally acclaimed library of rare medical books is now housed in the Harveian Library of the Royal College of Physicians. It contained almost every important book on cardiology that had ever been published. To the students Bedford was always known as the ‘the Old Top.’ He was encyclopaedic and his innate shyness was hidden behind a frosty and forbidding exterior. Many found him an awesome figure, and he suffered neither fools nor knaves. Colleagues and junior staff were careful to handle him with tact. Hospital noise, traffic congestion and hospital administrators were well known to set him off. There were many interesting student tales about the great man. When road works outside the Middlesex Hospital produced such deafening noises from pneumatic drills and other machinery that auscultation of a patient’s heart was well nigh impossible, Bedford contacted the local council and had such works stopped between the hours of 10 and 12 on Tuesdays and Thursday while he conducted his ward rounds. It was said of him that: “He played an important role in developing cardiology into more of a science than it had ever been before, being at the forefront of the improvements in the electrical recordings and radiological techniques which were being developed. He insisted on undertaking a meticulous post-mortem examination of the heart of any of his patients who died.” In his younger days he was an excellent hockey player and a good cricketer. He was one of the greatest names in twentieth century cardiology.

ALAN FLEMING McGLASHAN (1899-1997). M.C., B.A. (Cantab.), M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (Eng.), D.P.M. (Eng.). –

Celebrated Psychiatrist and Eclectic Jungian Psychoanalyst.

“He entered the Royal Flying Corps at a tender age during the First World War, flying many perilous missions, including two aerial encounters with the “Red Baron,” the German ace

Baron von Richthofen.”Robert Hinshaw. The Independent (May 1997).

Alan Fleming McGlashan (1899-1997) [Epsom College 1910-1916. De Havilland Exhibition] was the son of Dr James McGlashan, a practitioner of Newhaven, East Sussex. He did well at Epsom College, being a prefect and a member of the Rugby XV. He was awarded an Exhibition to Clare College, Cambridge in 1916, but because of the First World War, had his entry to Cambridge University deferred until 1918. He then completed his medical training at St George’s Hospital, qualifying M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (Eng.) in 1924. In 1916, at the early age of 18, he joined the Royal Flying Corps. After flying many perilous missions over the German lines, including two aerial encounters with the “Red Baron,” the German ace, Baron von Richthofen, he was awarded the M.C. and the Croix de Guerre avec Palme. The citation read: “He has accomplished all his missions with the greatest devotion, and on many occasions has succeeded in reconnaissance at very low altitude in perilous conditions under violent enemy fire.” He was frequently mentioned in dispatches. After the war Alan McGlashan worked on a tramp steamer as ship’s surgeon (1923-1924) before joining his father in general practice. During this period he also worked as a drama critic for The Observer and News Chronicle. Several years later he changed direction by training at the Maudsley Hospital and The Tavistock Clinic as a psychiatrist, and during the Second World War he served as a consulting psychiatrist on the War Office Selection Board (1941-1945). It was at this time that he became particularly taken with the ideas of Carl Gustav Jung, and he travelled to Zurich for consultations with him on several occasions. In 1984, he edited an abridged version of Jung’s correspondence with Sigmund Freud. Alan McGlashan was a serious philosopher and he exchanged ideas and friendships with some of the leading thinkers of the day, among them Arthur Koestler and J. B. Priestley. His close friends included the Afrikaner writer and explorer Sir Laurens Van der Post. The phenomenon of time and paradox always challenged him. He believed in delight as a key to living. “Delight is a mystery,” he wrote, “and the mystery is this; to plunge boldly into brilliance and immediacy of living, at the same time as utterly surrendering to that which lies beyond space and time; to see life translucently.” In 1966 McGlashan published his best-known book The Savage and Beautiful Country: the secret life of the mind. In it he gives his own speculative philosophy of life, beautifully crafted. In the foreword he writes: “The purpose of the book is to indicate a new direction of perception: an almost perceptive inner change – a willed suspension of conventional judgements, a poised still awareness, a stillness in which long-smothered voices that speak the language of the soul can be heard again.” Marshall McLuhan described the book as one of the most prophetic works of the decade. Alan McGlashan was a member of the psychiatric staff at St George’s Hospital, the Maudsley and the West End Hospital. His large private practice was known for drawing a wide range of clientele from the rich and famous to the very ordinary, all of them facing life’s vicissitudes with varying degrees of success, among them H. R. H The Prince of Wales and, as she would become, Diana, Princess of Wales. In his spare time he was an avid glider pilot (holding certificate number 28, issued in 1930) and a hot-air balloonist. He was still playing tennis when well into his eighties, and was passionate about mythology, delivering a number of BBC broadcasts on the subject of mythology and psychiatry. Approaching his 99 th birthday, McGlashan was still seeing patients one week before his death. This permitted him the

luxury, he felt, of having only a small number, but this, he delightedly commented, had raised the level of his work. In his obituary it was written: “He took meticulous care in preparing himself for every analytic session – like a sacred ritual – so as to be open, receptive and alert for whatever might arise. This struck one as being not unlike the purification rites that were practised in the ancient Greek temples of healing at Epidauros: before the possibility of healing could even be considered, one had first to prepare oneself totally to receive it: no shortcuts, no preconceptions.”