Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Cancer surgeon

First Title value, for Searching Westbury, Gerald (1927 - 2014)

2024-05-02T14:26:12Z

by Harold Ellis
Publication Date 2014-07-18 2014-09-24
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005600-E005699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377856377856
Occupation Cancer surgeon Surgical oncologist
Details Gerald ('Charlie') Westbury was professor of surgery and director of the Institute of Cancer Research at the Royal Marsden Hospital. He was born in London on 29 July 1927, the elder son of Lew and Celia Westbury. His parents were of Eastern European Jewish origin and his father was a tailor. After attending St Marylebone Grammar School, Westbury entered Westminster Medical School, University of London, in 1944 and graduated MB BS with honours in 1949. He did his surgical house appointments at Westminster and the Royal Northern Hospital, followed by National Service in the medical branch of the Royal Air Force from 1950 to 1952. During his service he obtained both his MRCP and FRCS. On demobilisation, he became a resident surgical officer at the Brompton Hospital, then returned to the Westminster as surgical registrar and then senior registrar to Sir Stanford Cade from 1953 to 1960, interrupted only by a year as fellow in surgery at Harvard Medical School in 1957. In 1960, he succeeded his old chief and mentor, Sir Stanford Cade, as consultant surgeon at Westminster and remained on its surgical staff until 1982. Here he continued the Cade tradition of a multidisciplinary approach to the treatment of malignant disease with his radiotherapist and pathology colleagues. He collaborated with the plastic surgeons in radical ablation followed by reconstruction of the head and neck, and pioneered isolated limb cytotoxic perfusion for advanced melanomas. In 1982, Westbury was appointed foundation professor of surgery at the Royal Marsden Hospital, and served there until his retirement in 1989. Here he established a sarcoma multidisciplinary unit, which soon achieved worldwide recognition, as well as continuing his interest in malignant melanoma. He was respected not only as a brilliant technical surgeon but also as a shrewd clinician and diagnostician. He served as dean of the Institute of Cancer Research at the Marsden from 1986 until 1992. Westbury held important appointments outside his duties at the Marsden. He was a consultant surgeon to the Army from 1980 to 1989, president of the British Association of Surgical Oncology from 1989 to 1992, and was appointed fellow of the Institute of Cancer Research in 2000. He examined widely in surgery, including London, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Hong Kong. He was appointed OBE in 1990. After retirement in 1989, Westbury served as trustee of a number of charities and enjoyed his hobbies of music, bird-watching and walking. In 1965 he married Hazel Frame, who died shortly before her husband. They had three daughters, one of whom, Charlotte, is a clinical oncologist. Westbury died on 12 June 2014, aged 86.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005673
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Leffall, Lasalle Doheny (1930 - 2019)

2024-05-02T14:26:12Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2019-09-16
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009600-E009699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/382616382616
Occupation Cancer surgeon
Details Lasalle Doheny Leffall was born on 22 May 1930 in Tallahassee, Florida. His father, a teacher from Texas, was principal of a racially segregated high school in Quincy, Florida and that was where he grew up. From an early age he was keen to study medicine – he has said that this ambition began when he treated a wounded bird as a child. He finished high school at the age of 15 and enrolled at the Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University in Tallahassee which was, at that time, a Black university. On graduating *summa cum laude* at the age of 18 in 1948, he commenced to study medicine at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, DC. Passing his MD with distinction in 1952, he held various training posts at the Homer G. Phillips Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri, the D.C. General Hospital, the Freedmen’s Hospital and, lastly, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. There followed a year of military service as chief of general surgery at the US Army Hospital in Munich, Germany, from 1960 to 1961, with the rank of captain. He then returned to Howard University and joined the faculty as an assistant professor, advancing academically until he became chairman of the department of surgery in 1970, a post he held for 25 years. In 1992 he was appointed the Charles R. Drew professor – the chair being named after a pioneering African American surgeon. He ceased operating in 2005 although he still attended surgical rounds and continued practicing medicine until 2013. Indeed, at the age of 85, he was still active in his field. The study of cancer was throughout his career his major preoccupation and particularly as it affected African- Americans. In 1979 he inaugurated the first programme to investigate the increasing incidence and mortality of cancer in this group and its implications for similar studies in other racial and ethnic minorities. He was the first African American president of the American Cancer Society in 1979 and of the American College of Surgeons in 1995. A visiting professor and guest lecturer at over 200 medical institutions in the USA and overseas, he was known as an eloquent speaker. He also wrote or contributed to over 100 books and journal articles. He married Ruth née McWilliams during his time as a senior at Howard University and they had one son, LaSalle Leffall III, who became a businessman. A jazz fan, he was close friends with the musician Cannonball Adderley. In 2005 he published an autobiography *No boundaries: a cancer surgeon’s odyssey* (Washington, DC. Howard University Press, 2005). On 25 May 2019 he died of cancer aged 89 and was survived by his wife, son and sister Dolores.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009644
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Rowntree, Cecil William (1880 - 1943)

2024-05-02T14:26:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-10-23
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004500-E004599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376722376722
Occupation Cancer surgeon Surgical oncologist
Details Born on 22 February 1880, second child and eldest son of the four sons and three daughters of William George Rowntree, MRCS 1874, of Islington, and his wife, *née* Kirkby. He was educated at Islington High School, University College, London, and the Middlesex Hospital, where he won the Murray scholarship in 1901 and the Freeman obstetrics and Hetley clinical medicine and surgery scholarships in 1902, the year in which he qualified. He subsequently served as registrar in the cancer wards, research scholar in the cancer research laboratory, and surgical registrar. In 1908-09 he was a Hunterian professor at the Royal College of Surgeons, lecturing on x-ray carcinoma (*Lancet*, 1909, 1, 821), and from 1909 to 1911 he edited the *Middlesex Hospital Surgical Reports* and contributed several articles himself. In 1912 he edited the second edition of *Cancer of the breast clinically considered* (1904) by Cecil Huntingdon Leaf, and contributed the chapter on Treatment of cancer to A Latham and T C English's *System of medicine*. He was appointed to the surgical staff of the Royal Cancer Hospital, served eventually as senior surgeon for many years, and was elected consulting surgeon when he retired in 1940. He was also senior, later emeritus, surgeon to the Woolwich and District War Memorial Hospital; consulting surgeon to the Caterham, Erith, and East Grinstead cottage hospitals, and for a time surgeon to the Dreadnought Hospital. He was commissioned as a captain in the RAMC Territorial force on 18 November 1911; served during the first world war as medical officer to the 16th Battalion the Queen's Westminster Rifles from 18 May 1915, and was promoted brevet major on 3 June 1917. He was also consulting surgeon to the American Red Cross. Rowntree was a pioneer who fought hard for reforms and innovations. He achieved an international reputation as a cancer surgeon, and his marked executive ability brought him to the fore also in professional organizations both at home and abroad. He was president of the subsection of proctology at the Royal Society of Medicine 1929-30; and in the British Empire Cancer Campaign he served as a member of the Grand Council and its clinical research committee, and a deputy chairman of the executive committee. He also organized the Campaign's informal biennial conferences of cancer workers, and was vice-president of the 1939 conference. In 1928-29 he was chairman of the Westminster division of the British Medical Association. He was honorary secretary of the surgical section and honorary chairman of the executive committee at the International Cancer Conference held in London in July 1928; and British representative in the Union international contre le Cancer, where he also served on the executive committee and was elected a vice-president. He was created a Chevalier of the French Légion d'Honneur and an Officier of the Belgian Ordre de Leopold for his international services to cancer research. Rowntree was a man of high principle, who early in life refused an attractive chance of rapid advancement rather than go against his conscience. He was deeply interested in his fellow-men, was absolutely loyal to his colleagues and pupils, and allowed no compromise in matters on which he had taken decision. Withal he was enthusiastic, friendly, and optimistic, and full of encouragement and inspiration both for his patients and for colleagues who sought his advice in surgical or ethical difficulties. He was a handsome and dignified man of fine build, with red hair; and an excellent and humorous after-dinner speaker. He practised at 9 Upper Brook Street and later at 17 Harley House, NW1. Rowntree married in 1908 Katharine Aylmer, daughter of H Whitworth Jones, who survived him with two sons and a daughter. The younger son, Thomas Whitworth Rowntree, was admitted an FRCS in 1942. Rowntree had been a fine athlete and golfer and an active member of the Ranelagh Club. He suffered from severe cardiac illness during the last four years of his life, and died at Little Warren, East Grinstead, Sussex, on 14 October 1943, aged 63. He was cremated at East Croydon and his ashes were scattered on the lawns of Woolwich memorial hospital, Shooter's Hill. In his memory a medical and surgical reference library was founded at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, Sussex (*Brit med J* 1944, 1, 642). Publications: Leaf's *Cancer of the breast clinically considered*, 2nd edition, London, 1912. Treatment of cancer, in Latham and English *System of medicine*, 1912. Operative surgery of the aged. *Clin J* 1931, 60, 257. Cancer of the breast. *Brit med J* 1937, 1, 153. On x-ray carcinoma and an experimental inquiry into the conditions which precede its onset, Hunterian lecture, RCS. *Lancet*, 1909, 1, 821.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004539
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset