Joseph Schorstein qualified MD in Vienna in 1931. He then continued his studies at University College Hospital, London. He was chief assistant to the neurosurgical department of the Royal Infirmary, Manchester and then became consultant neurosurgeon to the West Scotland Neurosurgical Unit. When he retired he was clinical assistant in the department of psychological medicine at the Southern General Hospital, Glasgow. During the second world war he was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the RAMC. He is thought to have died in 1976. **See below for an expanded version of the original obituary which was printed in volume 6 of Plarr’s Lives of the Fellows. Please contact the library if you would like more information lives@rcseng.ac.uk** Joseph Schorstein was a distinguished neurosurgeon in Glasgow. He was born on 8 December 1909 in the small town of Miroslav in Moravia, the son of a rabbi, Nachum. Early in Schorstein’s childhood the family moved to Brno, where he attended the local gymnasium. He began his medical studies at the University of Vienna when he was 17 and graduated in 1931. He is said to have attended a meeting where Hitler was speaking and, convinced of the risks of staying in Germany or Austria, he decided to start his medical career in the UK. Most of his family died in the Holocaust, though his mother survived and joined him in Glasgow after the war. He attended University College Hospital for clinical studies and, by 1935, had the conjoint examination, qualifying him to practise medicine in the UK. He moved on to Manchester, where he trained in neurosurgery at the Royal Infirmary with Geoffrey Jefferson. He later worked as the assistant director of the David Lewis Centre for children and adults affected by epilepsy. He gained his FRCS in 1938. During the Second World War he served as a senior neurosurgeon in the British Army, becoming a lieutenant colonel in the RAMC. He was the neurosurgeon in charge of the No 5 Mobile Neurosurgical Unit in North Africa and Italy, one of only seven such units. The unit went with the 1st Army to North Africa and then to Italy with the Allied advance. During fighting in Sicily in July and August 1943, he participated in the first trial of penicillin in war wounds, showing a reduction in levels of infection. This was written up as *A preliminary report on the treatment of head wounds with penicillin. Investigation of war wounds* (1943, London, War office publication AMD7/90D/43). During the battle of Monte Cassino in May 1944 he was based at a hospital in Naples and dealt with 333 cases of head wounds in just two weeks. His unit gradually moved north through Italy and was based for a while near Florence. Sir Hugh Cairns, one of the leading figures in wartime neurosurgery, wrote that he considered Schorstein’s work, especially in the management of intracranial haematoma, a ‘fine achievement’. After the war, Schorstein wrote about his wartime neurosurgical experiences in three articles in the war supplement of the *British Journal of Surgery* in 1947 (An atlas of head wounds illustrating standard operative technique’ British Journal of Surgery: War Surgery Supplement 1: Wounds of the head, 27-51. 1947; ‘Intracranial haematoma in missile wounds’ British Journal of Surgery: War Surgery Supplement 1: Wounds of the head, 96-112. 1947; ‘Primary skull closure with acrylic plates’ British Journal of Surgery: War Surgery Supplement 1: Wounds of the head, 256-7. 1947’). The experience of wartime surgery had a profound effect on Schorstein. After the war he was a patient under the psychiatrist Wilhelm Mayer-Gross at the Crichton Royal Hospital in Dumfries and was treated on later occasions. After returning to the UK at the end of the war, he was first based at the Military Hospital for Head Injuries in Oxford. He then moved to Glasgow, where he was a consultant neurosurgeon at the west of Scotland neurosurgical unit based at Kilhearn Hospital, working with Eric Paterson and James Sloan Robertson. He later became a consultant neurosurgeon at the Institute of Neurological Sciences at Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital. Schorstein had a high reputation among his colleagues for his surgical technique and skill in diagnosis. During his career he published 15 medical papers, the majority written in the 1940s. Many were on head injuries, especially from gunshot and missile wounds. One important paper, written with Geoffrey Jefferson in 1955, was on injuries to the trigeminal nerve (‘Injuries of the trigeminal nerve, its ganglion and its divisions’ *Br J Surg.* 1955 May;42[176]:561-81). Schorstein was a polymath, fluent in Latin, French, Hebrew, German, Italian, Czech and English, who could debate the ideas of philosophers from Plato to Heidegger. He published or presented papers on social and philosophical topics to members of a study group in Glasgow, some of which focused on social responsibility and the limits of science and medicine. Schorstein first met the radical psychiatrist R D Laing at Kilhearn in 1951 and he rapidly became a mentor and father figure to the young doctor. In his autobiography, Laing described being ‘grilled’ by Schorstein at three o’clock in the morning after an operating session, with the older man interrogating him on philosophy. ‘After that night, Joe adopted me as his pupil; he became my spiritual father, neurological and intellectual mentor and guide to European literature. He was the first older, fully educated European intellectual I had come to know. He seemed to be the incarnation of all the positions of the European consciousness: Hasidism, Marxism, science and nihilism … He was a master of the European tradition to which I was becoming mature enough to presume to be born.’ Schorstein retired early from neurosurgical practice in 1967 because of ill health but held a post at the University of Glasgow’s department of psychological medicine, based at Southern General Hospital. He married Mary Power in 1939 in Hampstead, London. They had a son, David. Schorstein died in 1976. Sarah Gillam