Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Cardiac surgeon

First Title value, for Searching Leckie, Bruce Douglas (1927 - 2012)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2021-02-10
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009900-E009999
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Bruce Leckie was a cardiac surgeon at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney. This is a draft obituary. If you have any information about this surgeon or are interested in writing this obituary, please email lives@rcseng.ac.uk
Resource Identifier RCS: E009928
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Jahan, Saulat Begum (1920 - 2001)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2012-04-12 2018-05-23
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002100-E002199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374369374369
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Saulat Jahan was professor of surgery at the Fatima Jinnah Medical College for Women and a consultant surgeon at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan, where she was known for her care of the sick, poor and destitute. She was born and raised in Delhi and gained her MB BS degree from Lady Hardinge College of Women, New Delhi. In England she gained her diploma from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and her fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. She was a surgical intern to McNeil Love. She married Mirza Mahmud Shah in 1934, who died just a year after their marriage. She later married Richard Pankhurst, but they divorced. She had one child, a daughter. She died on 18 November 2001 and was buried in Calgary, Canada.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002186
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Nair, Kunhi Krishnan ( - )

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

First Title value, for Searching Braimbridge, Mark Viney (1924 - 2016)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2016-11-21 2020-01-30
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009200-E009299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381458381458
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Mark Viney Braimbridge was a consultant cardiac surgeon at St Thomas' Hospital, London. He was the son of Clifford Viney Braimbridge CBE, MVO, MA, FRCS Edin, DTM&H who, after serving in the first world war, spent all his life as a surgeon in Kenya. For many years he was the only qualified surgeon in government practice and was known as the father of surgery in East Africa. His mother Jane Murray née Southwell died in 1930 when Mark was only six years old. After studying medicine at Cambridge he qualified MB BChir in 1951 and won the Brackenbury scholarship in surgery at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. He then did house jobs at the Brompton Hospital and the London Chest Hospital. In the USA he worked at Stanford University Hospital in San Francisco on a Heller fellowship. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1954 and was Hunterian professor in 1963. A pioneer of heart surgery and a keen researcher he published widely on the subject including two important books *Lecture notes on cardiology* with James Samuel Fleming (Oxford, Blackwell Scientific, 2nd ed 1977) and *Postoperative cardiac intensive care* (Oxford, Blackwell Scientific, 3rd ed 1981). After retirement he threw himself into a new life in horticulture and founded the European Boxwood and Topiary Society, contributing many articles to its magazine *Toparious*. He also greatly enjoyed travelling and continued to do so even when he began to suffer from a gradual loss of hearing and balance. He died on 31 October 2016 aged 92, survived by his wife Elizabeth; children Fiona, Charles, Laura and Sophie; grandchildren Fergus, Georgia, Bertie, Charlie, Miranda, Crispin, Ella, Lula, and Amelia; stepchildren Carolyn, Michael and Raymond and step-grandchildren Oscar and Luke.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009275
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Shumacker, Harris B (1908 - 2009)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2015-09-14 2018-07-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008000-E008099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380235380235
Occupation Cardiac surgeon Cardiovascular surgeon General surgeon
Details Harris B Shumacker was chairman of the department of surgery at Indiana University and a pioneer of cardiovascular surgery. He was born on 20 May 1908 in Laurel, Mississippi, the son of Harris Blumenthal Shumacker and Corinne Selma Shumacker née Teller. He attended the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Vanderbilt University, and completed his medical studies at Johns Hopkins University. He trained in surgery at Johns Hopkins under Alfred Blalock then, from 1936 to 1938, he was an instructor in surgery at Yale University. He subsequently moved back to Johns Hopkins, where he was an instructor from 1938 to 1941. In 1942, he joined the US Army and fought in the Pacific during the Second World War. Following his demobilisation in 1946, he became an associate professor at Yale. In 1948, he was appointed as the third chairman of the department of surgery at Indiana University's School of Medicine and served in that role until 1968. Here he established an internationally renowned department with a particular interest in cardiovascular surgery. After his retirement from Indiana University, he became a professor and special adviser at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland. He performed the first open heart surgeries in Indiana and worked to develop synthetic grafts for valve and blood vessel replacement. He described sympathectomy for frostbite and, with Harold King, was the first to describe post-splenectomy infection and sepsis. He also worked on the early development of the artificial heart. Shumacker was the author or co-author of nearly 600 papers and wrote 50 monographs or chapters in textbooks. He was either president or chairman of most of the leading surgical societies in the United States. In December 1933, he married Myrtle (known as 'Myrtie') E Landau. They had two sons, Peter and James, and six grandchildren. Myrtie died in 1992 and Shumacker married Grace. He died on 14 November 2009 at the age of 101.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008052
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching De Vernejoul, Robert (1890 - 1992)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Tom Treasure
Publication Date 2012-09-07 2012-12-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002800-E002899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375029375029
Occupation Cardiac surgeon Gastrointestinal surgeon General surgeon
Details Robert de Vernejoul was a prominent French cardiac surgeon. He was born on 19 March 1890 at Montcaret in the Dordogne. His father was a pastor. He came from a noble family, originally from the village of Vernajoul near Foix. His ancestors can be traced back to 16th century. He was educated at the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand and studied medicine in Marseilles. He deferred his internship, having decided to do military service. In 1914 Robert de Vernejoul was mobilised in Toulon and went to the front with the 8th Régiment de Marche de Zouaves. His heroic action at Verdun in 1916 earned him la croix de L'Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur. The citation noted that he was the only doctor and worked day and night with tireless devotion. It recounted that, although he was wounded himself, he continued to treat the injured under heavy fire. In the trenches he decided to convert to Catholicism. He warned his father, who simply responded: do what your conscience tells you. After being demobilised, he married Madeleine Hotz, the daughter of Florent Hotz from Alsace. He resumed his internship in Marseilles, was appointed hospital surgeon in 1923 and head of the department in 1934. He became one of the masters of gastrointestinal surgery in France. In 1939, when the Second World War was declared, he recognised neither the defeat of France nor the Vichy government. He joined the resistance and the medical committee presided over by Louis Pasteur Vallery-Radot. He was elevated to commandeur de L'Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur, which he received personally from General de Gaulle in recognition of his actions in the resistance. In 1951, aged 61, he turned down an invitation to become Minister of Health so that he could continue his hospital and university work, but nevertheless maintained a friendly relationship with General de Gaulle. He could have continued to quietly accumulate more experience in general surgery but, sensing the direction that surgery was taking, in 1947 he introduced experimental surgery to Marseilles, and from 1948 held top clinical and research appointments at Hôpital de la Conception and Hôpital de la Timone. Following several visits to the United States, he introduced cardiac surgery and a second career began for Robert de Vernejoul. Working with Francois d'Allaines and Paul Santy, surgery for persistent ductus arteriosus, coarctation and mitral stenosis was added to the operating lists. At the same time, in his research laboratory, he was experimenting with hypothermia and cardiopulmonary bypass, work which he presented to the L'Académie Nationale de Chirurgie in 1952. In 1956 Robert de Vernejoul was elected president of the national council of L'Ordre des Médecins, a position he held for 14 years. Throughout the 1960s he remained active and influential in matters concerning the organisation of hospitals, medical training and the ethical implications of medical innovation. At 73 he chaired the 65th French Congress of Surgery and, in the same year, 1963, he was elected to the Académie Nationale de Médecine. Jean-Paul Binet writes that, at the age of 90, he was still '…overflowing with vitality, ideas, [and] desire for change'. Robert de Vernejoul died on 15 October 1992.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002846
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Bentall, Hugh Henry (1920 - 2012)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Raymond Hurt
Publication Date 2012-11-09 2013-01-23
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003100-E003199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375303375303
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Hugh Bentall was professor of cardiac surgery at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London, and a pioneer in the development of surgery using the heart-lung machine. He was born in Worthing, Sussex, on 28 April 1920, the son of Henry Bentall and Lilian Alice Bentall née Greeno. He was educated at Seaford College, Sussex, and St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, where he graduated in 1942. A natural leader, whilst a medical student he produced a play *Death on the table* at Hill End Hospital, St Albans, to which part of Bart's had been evacuated during the Second World War. His first junior house job was at the North Middlesex Hospital under the senior surgeon/medical director Ivor Lewis, and this initiated his interest in thoracic surgery. After further junior posts at the Gordon Hospital and London Chest Hospital, he joined the Royal Navy in 1945, serving on the hospital ship *Empire Clyde*. After leaving the Navy in 1947, he taught anatomy for six months at Charing Cross Hospital and obtained his FRCS qualification in 1950. In 1959 he was appointed as a lecturer and then, in 1962, as a reader at the Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital under Ian Aird, where, in association with Dennis Melrose, the first successful heart-lung machine in England was developed. In 1959 the Hammersmith cardiac surgery team was invited to Moscow. The group, led by Bill Cleland (surgeon) and including Melrose (physiologist), Bentall (assistant surgeon), John Beard (anaesthetist), Arthur Hollman (cardiologist), a theatre technician and a buxom theatre sister much admired by the Russians, successfully operated on five children with congenital heart disease under cardiopulmonary bypass. It is reported that Cleland said afterwards: 'Well, the good Lord had little else to do in Moscow, so he looked after us.' A donation from his father's successful department store in Kingston-on-Thames financed Hugh's appointment to a personal chair of cardiac surgery at Hammersmith (the first in England). In 1965 he successfully operated on a patient with Marfan's syndrome and replaced a leaking aortic valve and a dilated ascending aorta in a single operation, an operation which subsequently became known as the 'Bentall procedure'. Later he concentrated on the treatment of patients with the heart conduction abnormality known as the Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. He was a founder member of Pete's Club, where there was just one rule - that 'no case should throw credit on the presenter'. Only errors of judgement were discussed, and the members subsequently learnt a tremendous amount from these meetings, much more than at other national and international surgical meetings. He was technically a good surgeon, but would never accept responsibility for any technical problem which might develop in an operation - and his assistants found it difficult to accept this situation. After his retirement in 1985 he taught anatomy at the Royal Free Hospital for five years and developed an interest in horology at the Greenwich Observatory. In 1944 he married Jean Wilson (who died early in 2012), a medical student he met at the North Middlesex Hospital. They had three sons and one daughter. Sadly in his late eighties he developed Alzheimer's disease/dementia. He died on 9 September 2012 at the age of 92.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003120
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Smith, Geoffrey Harry (1937 - 2016)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Tom Treasure
Publication Date 2016-02-19 2016-05-27
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009000-E009099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381253381253
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Geoffrey Smith was professor of cardiac surgery at the University of Sheffield. He was born in Derby on 11 November 1937. His father, Stanley James Smith, was a greengrocer. His mother was Barbara née Perston and his maternal grandfather was a mechanic at Rolls-Royce in Derby. He was educated at Derby Grammar School and at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, London. As a medical student he gained a number of prizes, notably in heart disease and surgery. He achieved a distinction in surgery at the final MB BS examination. He was a house surgeon at St Mary's and a surgical registrar at the United Sheffield Hospitals. He was a senior registrar at the Hospital for Diseases of the Chest in London. Surgeons who influenced him in his cardiothoracic training included Vernon Thompson and Marvin Sturridge at the London Chest Hospital. Others were Sir Frank Holdsworth, Sir Arthur Porritt and Herbert C Duthie. He returned to Sheffield in 1969 and joined another of his mentors, Desmond Taylor, as a consultant surgeon there. In the maturing specialty of cardiac surgery, he paid particular attention to the quality of surgery and the reporting of results. In 1984 he published *Complications of cardiopulmonary surgery* (London, Baillière Tindall), which was an influential book at the time. He was instrumental in negotiating for a chair of cardiac surgery to be funded by the British Heart Foundation in Sheffield. Disappointed by the quality of applicants, Smith put his own hat in the ring and was appointed, becoming one of a handful of professors of cardiac surgery in 1987. He performed the first heart transplant in Sheffield in 1989. He was an early adopter of surgical techniques for mitral valve repair and published his results in the *British Heart Journal* ('Mitral valve repair: a valuable procedure with good long term results even when performed infrequently.' *Br Heart J*. 1991 Aug;66[2]:156-60). A highlight of his career was his presidency of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland (from 1992 to 1994). He served on the education committee of the European Association of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. He inspired the best of his trainees, recognising their abilities and encouraging them. He pointed out to his trainee Samer Nashef the first publication by Victor Parsonnet of a means of risk adjustment of cardiac surgical results. It is described with credit given to Smith in Nashef's book *The naked surgeon: the power and peril of transparency in medicine* (Scribe Publications, 2015). Nashef went on to become a leader on methods to fairly reflect surgical quality. Gianni Angelini was another protégé who, in 1992, went from senior lecturer in Sheffield to become British Heart Foundation professor in Bristol, resulting in 25 years of major research contributions. In 1993 Smith led one of six advisory panels for the London Implementation Group on the reorganisation of medical specialties in London. The advisory team, chosen from hospitals outside London so they would be unbiased, proposed closing Harefield Hospital, at Hillingdon on the western fringe of London. The proposal was overturned and Harefield has remained. His willingness to be adversarial came to the fore when he became known as a medicolegal expert who would take a robust position against colleagues in court and at the General Medical Council. After his retirement from Sheffield in 1993, he was chief of the cardiac service in Abu Dhabi, visiting professor in Umeå, Sweden, vice chancellor of the Asian Institute of Medicine, Kedah, Malaysia (in 2009) and medical adviser to the British Council. He met Brenda Lawson while a student. They met at Fellowship House in Holland Park, where Geoffrey Smith was living. They married in 1960. He enjoyed opera, golf and walking the hills around Ulverston in the Lake District with his dog. At home he was fond of bread-making. He and Brenda had three daughters, Analisa, Katy and Shan. There are four grandchildren: Isabella, Anna, Oliver and Molly. Geoffrey Smith died on 24 January 2016. He was 78.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009070
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Baliga, Anappa Vithal (1905 - 1964)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-01-15
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004800-E004899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377060377060
Occupation Cardiac surgeon General surgeon Neurosurgeon
Details Trained at the North Middlesex Hospital during 1930-32 as a general surgeon, he also practised neurosurgery and cardiac surgery. He became a frequent visitor to European and Russian clinics, attending surgical conferences, and was one of the early visitors to Moscow, when brain operations were carried out under local anaesthetics. He was keen to see surgical training in India raised to the standards of the UK or the USA and his efforts in this direction were tireless. He made many generous gifts to some of the medical colleges in Southern India, and many Indian students have cause to feel grateful for his anonymous gifts, which helped to pay their passage money to the UK or the entire expenses of their studies. Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, said of him, "I am deeply grieved to learn of Dr Baliga's death. He was a brilliant surgeon and a good man, devoted to good causes for which he subscribed liberally. As a president of the Indo-Soviet Cultural Society, he laboured for strengthening friendship between India and the Soviet Union. His sudden death has deprived India of a distinguished surgeon and a patriot of great merit and accomplishment." Baliga practised at Patel Chambers, Sandhurst Bridge, Bombay, but died in London on 19 May 1964 after attending a surgical congress in Vienna. He was survived by his wife.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004877
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First Title value, for Searching Muntarbhorn, Smarn (1914 - 2001)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008800-E008899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380986380986
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Smarn Muntarbhorn, the father of cardiac surgery in Thailand, was the first Thai to become a Fellow of the College. He was born in Surathani, Thailand, on 20 November 1914. His father, Wan Muntarbhorn, was a book-store owner and druggist. His mother was a Miss Chuan. He matriculated from Suan Kularb College in Bangkok and was then awarded a King's scholarship from Thailand to study abroad. He attended Manchester Grammar School and then went to Guy's Hospital to study medicine. There he won a scholarship in confined science and the Golding-Bird gold medal and prize in 1940. On qualifying, he was house surgeon at the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford, in 1943, remaining there as resident surgical officer for the ensuing year, serving in the Emergency Medical Service for three years altogether. He was influenced by Hedley Atkins and Heneage Ogilvie. On his return to Thailand, he started working at Siriraj Hospital, specialising in cardiothoracic surgery. His first cardiac catheterisation was in 1946 and in 1950 he performed the first pneumonectomy in Thailand. He founded the cardiopulmonary unit in Chulalongkorn Hospital. He did not confine his attention to cardiothoracic surgery, but performed the first operation for a prolapsed intervertebral disc, writing up his first 39 cases in 1953. He was awarded a royal honorary doctorate by the King of Thailand. He was President of the meeting of the International College of Surgeons in Thailand in from 1967 to 1969 and was President of the American College of Chest Physicians in Thailand from 1960 to 1971. He married Niramol Dhonavanik in 1950 and they had two sons, Kanit (who qualified at Guy's) and Vitit, and one daughter, Sirabhorn. He was a keen photographer. He died in 2001.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008803
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Senning, Åke (1915 - 2000)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-12-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008900-E008999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381101381101
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Åke Senning was a pioneering heart surgeon. He was born in Raettvik, Sweden, on 14 September 1915. He studied medicine in Uppsala and Stockholm, qualifying in 1944. In 1948, he joined the innovative cardiovascular surgeon Clarence Crafoord at the Sabbatsberg Hospital, Stockholm, with whom he helped to develop one of the first pump oxygenators for cardiopulmonary by-pass. After successful trials in dogs, it was used for the first time in 1953 to extract a left atrial myxoma from a young woman (who survived another 50 years). He was one of the first to use hypothermia and cardioplegia, and the first to use elective fibrillation in heart surgery. In 1956, he was associate Professor of Experimental Surgery at the university thoracic unit at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm. Two years later, he introduced his Senning repair for transposition of the great vessels, a method which was only (partly) superseded by the Mustard procedure in 1964. In 1958, he placed the first implantable pacemaker in a 43-year-old man with Stokes-Adams syndrome. It failed after six hours and had to be replaced. Forty years (and 26 pacemakers) later the patient was still alive at 83. In 1961, Senning moved to Zürich, to become Professor of Surgery and Director of Surgical Clinic A at the University Hospital. He remained in Zürich until he retired in 1985. It was there that he and his team performed the first heart transplant in Switzerland in 1969. He was a pioneer of coronary artery by-pass operations and helped Andreas Grüntzig with percutaneous transluminal coronary artery angioplasties. He was the recipient of numerous awards and wrote more than 350 publications. He died in Zürich after a long illness on 21 July 2000, survived by his wife Ulla, three sons and a daughter.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008918
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Venn, Graham Erskine (1954 - 2013)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Christopher Young
Publication Date 2013-11-08 2017-03-30
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004600-E004699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376810376810
Occupation Cardiac surgeon Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Graham Venn was a consultant cardiac surgeon at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and, for the last decade of his life, at the centre of British cardiac surgery. He was part of all aspects of the discipline, from being passionate about training junior surgeons, to overseeing cardiac surgical research at St Thomas' Hospital, to being influential in the running and governance of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery (SCTS), to his work linked with the Royal College of Surgeons and, finally, to his ensuring fair pay and contractual obligations for newly-appointed young consultants. Graham touched the lives of the cardiac surgical world in a way that few have. His wisdom, foresight and passion were remarkable from a young age. Graham Erskine Venn was born in Kent on 22 March 1954. He was educated at Dulwich College, London and went on to study medicine at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School from 1972 to 1977. Graham knew he wanted to be a heart surgeon as a student and one of his first posts after qualification was as houseman to the illustrious surgeons Jack Belcher, Marvin Sturridge and Donald Ross (the surgeon who performed the first UK heart transplant). Graham then went on to train under some of the greatest names in British cardiac surgery - Matt Paneth, Chris Lincoln, Stewart Lennox and Magdi Yacoub. The final part of his training was at the Hôpital Broussais in Paris, working with the father of heart valve repair, Alain Carpentier. During this period, Graham accumulated numerous prizes and distinctions, became a fellow of both the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of England and of Edinburgh, and went on to become a Hunterian professor of surgery at the RCS in 1989. Graham was appointed to the staff at St Thomas' Hospital in July 1989, where he quickly adopted a senior management as well as a clinical role, overseeing the difficult mergers of the Brook cardiac unit and later the unification of Guy's and St Thomas' cardiac services to form part of the largest UK trust hospital. He later became a member of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London and was made a freeman of the City of London in 2003. Within the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery, Graham was influential for 20 years, from being an almost permanent member of the executive committee to chairing various society committees, such as the professional standards committee and the blood-borne infections panel. Latterly, Graham was a trustee and director of SCTS. In addition, Graham worked tirelessly through both the Society and the RCS to raise the standards of the profession, including leading on job planning (to ensure a fair deal for newly-appointed consultants) and acting as specialty adviser. Graham was also central to the development of the 'early response' initiative, a mechanism whereby the Society and RCS could rapidly respond to adverse surgical outcomes/performance by parachuting in a team. Graham himself formed part of the rapid response team, undertaking several exhausting reviews. Graham was appointed surgeon to the British Army in 1990, an honorary appointment whereby he initially looked after cardiac surgical issues for the entire Army and latterly provided advice on the management of chest trauma in overseas battle zones. Graham was a passionate trainer of young surgeons and his unassuming Facebook page was full of praise from his trainees. His final legacy was that the last three cardiac surgeons appointed to St Thomas' had been inspired by training under Graham. Two of them went on to train internationally, but all three wanted to come back to St Thomas' because of Graham's influence. Finally, Graham was an outstanding surgeon who pushed for increasing specialisation in cardiac surgery. His cardiac surgical results in general were outstanding, but particularly on mitral valve reconstructive surgery - a complex branch of cardiac surgery at which Graham excelled. He was very passionate about surgery and his patients. On one occasion Graham could not operate until another patient had left the ITU to move to another hospital, thereby vacating a post-operative bed. Such was the slowness of the pace, it appeared that Graham's patient would be cancelled that day. Graham was having none of it, and he went and found himself an old ambulance used for 'iron-lung' patients. He commandeered it and drove it to the main ITU himself. He was about to escort and drive the discharge patient himself, when the medical hierarchy gained control of the situation and suggested that an uninsured doctor driving a massive ambulance unescorted through the streets of London might not be in the patient's or Graham's best interests. Sadly, as Graham's health failed he had to give up surgery, but he was not one to sit at home! He soon became medical director of the UK for HCA International, a private healthcare company, a post he relished as he sought constantly to raise medical standards. Graham died of cancer on 29 September 2013. He was 59. He was survived by his widow Liz and her son Joe, his sons James and Jonathan, and his grandson Ryan.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004627
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Borst, Hans Georg (1927 - 2022)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2022-10-13
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010100-E010199
Occupation Cardiovascular surgeon Thoracic surgeon Cardiac surgeon Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Hans Georg Borst, head of the division of cardiothoracic and vascular surgery at Hannover Medical School, Germany was an internationally renowned cardiovascular surgeon who made major contributions to the surgical treatment of aortic aneurysm and aortic dissections, and to the development of cardiac transplantation. He was born on 17 October 1927 in Munich, the son of Max Borst, the influential chairman of pathology at Munich University, and Margarete Borst. Borst attended school in Munich until early 1945, when he joined the Luftwaffe and subsequently spent six months in a British prisoner of war camp. On his return home, he finished his schooling, taking his final examinations (abitur) at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria in 1947. He then worked as a labourer on a construction site for six months, a prerequisite for matriculation at the faculty of medicine, Munich University. After finishing his pre-clinical training in Munich, he transferred to Harvard Medical School in 1950, entering the second-year class and graduating in 1953. He was an intern in Emile Holman’s department of surgery at Stanford Hospital in San Francisco and then, from 1954 to 1956, a fellow in the department of physiology at Harvard School of Public Health, working with James L Whittenberger, Stanley Sarnoff, Erik Berglund and Jeremiah ‘Jere’ Mead. Here he produced seven papers on the developing fields of invasive cardiology and cardiac surgery. In late 1956 he returned to Germany and joined Rudolf Zenker at Marburg University. He applied his knowledge of the pathophysiology of extracorporeal circulation and was responsible for setting up extracorporeal circulation for the first open-heart procedures performed in Germany. His research resulted in two experimental papers on the combined use of the heart lung machine and moderate as well as deep hypothermia. In 1958 he moved to Munich University, following Zenker, who had been appointed chair of surgery, and completed his general surgical as well as thoracic and cardiovascular residencies there. In 1962 Borst presented his dozenten thesis on ‘The combination of extracorporeal circulation and hypothermia’, which was honoured with the von Langenbeck prize by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Chirurgie (the Germany Society for Surgery). While completing his residences, his interest was focused on thoracic aortic aneurysm. In 1963 he was the first surgeon to operate on the aortic arch in deep hypothermia and circulatory arrest. His laboratory work at that time dealt with myocardial blood flow during assisted circulation and induced ventricular fibrillation. In April 1968 he was appointed chairman of the department of surgery at the newly founded medical school of Hannover, and in 1971 he became head of the division of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery there. During the succeeding years, Borst and his department focused on several research topics, including: the consequences of temporary coronary occlusion; the effect of collateral blood flow in conjunction with cardioplegia; coronary and cerebral air embolism; the use of fibrin adhesive in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery; studies of the spinal cord during aortic cross clamping; and the preservation of the heart and lung in conjunction with transplantation. At Hannover he developed a large-scale operative programme in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery. Aside from the by then conventional surgery for valve and coronary heart disease, he and his department published extensively on: oesophagectomy for carcinoma of the oesophagus; thoracic aneurysms, especially new technologies in arch surgery; total correction of congenital anomalies in infancy; antiarrhythmic surgery; and clinical heart, heart lung and lung transplantation. In 1983 he and his colleagues introduced the ‘elephant trunk’ technique, a surgical aortic replacement for patients suffering from extensive aortic diseases. The technique helped to reduced complications during the repair of aortic aneurysms by performing a staged procedure. He was a founding member of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Thorax-, Herz- und Gefäßchirurgie (the German Society for Thoracic, Cardiac and Vascular Surgery) and cofounded the European Association for Cardiothoracic Surgery (EACTS). The EACTS Hans G Borst award for thoracic aortic surgery is named in his honour. From 1978 to 1987 he was editor of *Thoraxchirurgie*. Under his leadership the journal was renamed *The Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon*, was published in English and expanded to include cardiac surgery. In 1987 he was appointed as the founder editor of *The European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery*, the official journal of EACTS. He wrote more than 400 peer-reviewed papers and contributed to nearly 50 books. He was a member of many international associations and societies, including the British Cardiac Society, the Cardiothoracic Society (Pete’s Club, London), the Sociedad de Cardiocirujanos, Spain, the Société de Chirurgie Thoracique et Cardio-Vasculaire de Langue Française, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the American Surgical Association, the International Society for Cardiovascular Surgery and the International Society for Heart Transplantation. In 1987 he received the Erich Lexer prize of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Chirurgie for his work on cardiac transplantation. He became an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1989. Borst was married to Petra Angelika. They had four children – Mathias, Verena, Stefanie and Valerie – and nine grandchildren. Borst died on 8 September 2022. He was 94.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010163
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Hamilton, David Ian (1931 - 2017)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by James Wilkinson
Publication Date 2017-12-13 2018-01-24
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009300-E009399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381580381580
Occupation Cardiac surgeon Paediatric cardiac surgeon
Details David Hamilton was a surgeon whose major interest became surgery for congenital heart defects. He built up an outstanding department at the Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital and was the foundation professor of cardiac surgery at Edinburgh. He was born on 22 June 1931 to John Alexander King Hamilton (known as Jack) and Helen Eliza Bruce Hamilton née Kirk, and spent his early years in Middlesbrough. His father, a Quaker, had served as a noncombatant ambulance driver for the French Red Cross during the First World War and was awarded a George medal for defusing an unexploded bomb. He later worked as a civil engineer specialising in bridge building. David's mother, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, was a 'child of the manse' who trained as a nurse in Edinburgh. During the construction of Wandsworth bridge, the family moved to London, where they lived in Wimbledon. David went to King's College Junior School and then Leighton Park School (a Quaker school) in Reading. He developed a major interest in sport and became an enthusiastic rugby player, also playing cricket and tennis - and later golf. He was a member of the first XI cricket team at Leighton Park for four years, being a fine batsman and an excellent slip fielder. He played in an English schools rugby XV against a French schools' team in 1949. During National Service, he played rugby for the Royal Corps of Signals. While still at school he befriended Myra McAra, the daughter of the minister of the Presbyterian church in Wimbledon (also a 'child of the manse'). Their first date was for a game of golf. They married after he completed his studies at the Middlesex Hospital in 1957 and both died, in the same nursing home, in 2017 after almost 60 years of marriage. After National Service, he went to the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. In this pre-ultrasound and sophisticated imaging era, he acquired a sound basis of clinical skills. He had decided on a career in surgery as it would allow him to use the manual skills that he had learned during childhood from his father, an expert handyman. He therefore became an anatomy demonstrator and took his primary FRCS, passing at the first attempt, and went on to pass the final FRCS (again at the first attempt) in 1961. His early surgical experience included a rotation with Sir Thomas Holmes Sellors, which aroused his interest in cardiothoracic surgery. Sir Thomas tempted him to continue in that area of surgery and he went on to a term at Harefield Hospital, before applying for a senior registrar position in Liverpool, which started in 1965. Overseas training from 1966 to 1967 took him to California, to the Presbyterian Medical Center, San Francisco, with Frank Gerbode. Soon after returning to Liverpool in 1968, he was appointed to a newly-created full-time consultant post at Broadgreen Hospital. This appointment gave him the opportunity to expand his work into surgery for congenital heart disease at the Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital, Myrtle Street. This work was greatly aided by Gordon Jackson (Jack) Rees and the anaesthetic team, and achieved a national and international reputation, supported further by anatomical studies of congenitally malformed hearts by Bob Anderson, Jim Wilkinson and others in the Institute of Child Health at Alder Hey Hospital. David had been the inspiration for these now famous anatomical studies, having encouraged Bob Anderson to examine the conducting tissue in the heart of a child who had died after developing heart block, following surgery for an atrioventricular septal defect. His research activities, while in San Francisco, had involved tissue valves, and he developed a major interest in the use of homograft and heterograft valves. He visited Green Lane Hospital in Auckland in 1969 and was impressed by the work that was being performed by the team under Brian (later Sir Brian) Barratt-Boyes with deep hypothermic circulatory arrest. With Jackson Rees, he developed a technique of core cooling, which became the standard practice for deep hypothermia in Liverpool and in many other centres, rather than the surface cooling, which had been developed in Auckland in the 1960's. His time in Liverpool saw the arrival of prostaglandin as a means of palliation for sick infants with critical coronary heart disease and the introduction of two-dimensional echocardiography. Both of these changes brought a huge change to the management and outcomes for affected infants. The introduction of prostaglandin E to initial treatment was, he said, the basis of a substantial reduction in his golf handicap, as the need for emergency surgical intervention was greatly reduced! David inspired and guided many trainees from home and abroad, especially from Poland, where he developed a strong link, travelling thither on many occasions over about 15 years from the late 70's and throughout the 1980's. In 1986, David was appointed to the foundation chair of cardiac surgery in Edinburgh. He continued in that position until his retirement in 1993. He was president of the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland in 1993. David was a skillful surgeon and an excellent teacher. He was gentle, unassuming, modest, self-disciplined and inspired by the Quaker values of strength without aggression and gentleness without weakness. His main leisure activities during retirement involved music (always a passion) and golf, which he continued to play until nearly 80. In his later years he became increasingly incapacitated by Parkinson's disease. David died on 6 October 2017 at the age of 86. He and Myra were survived by their sons James, Alastair and Ross. Their first son, Ian, predeceased them in 2016.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009397
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching De Leval, Marc Roger (1941 - 2022)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2022-08-26
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010100-E010199
Occupation Cardiothoracic Surgeon Paediatric cardiac surgeon Cardiac surgeon
Details Professor Marc de Leval, a leading paediatric heart surgeon, established the heart transplant unit at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, and was a pioneer of patient safety and risk management research. He was born on 16 April 1941 in the village of Charneux in Belgium, the eldest of seven children of Julien and Anne-Marie de Leval. His father and grandfather were both general practitioners. De Leval studied medicine at the University of Liege and qualified in 1966. He completed a residency in internal medicine and then trained at Liege for three years in general surgery. He decided to specialise in cardiac surgery and from 1970 spent two years as a fellow at the Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco under Frank Gerbode, a prominent cardiac surgeon. De Leval was subsequently appointed as a senior surgical registrar at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, where he worked under David Waterston and Jaroslav Stark. He was awarded the Evarts A Graham Memorial travelling fellowship of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery and spent 1973 to 1974 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he worked with Robert Wallace, Dwight McGoon and Gordon Danielson. In 1974 he returned to Great Ormond Street as a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon. In 1988 he established the heart and heart and lung transplant programmes at the hospital. He also carried out the first paediatric heart transplant there. He chaired the hospital’s cardiorespiratory and critical care division from 2003 to 2005. In mid-career, after more than 50 successful arterial switch operations, he suddenly found that some of his young patients were dying following surgery. Showing exceptional humility, he decided to review his techniques, analyse his results and retrain, working with the statistician David Spiegelhalter. The 1994 paper they co-wrote concluded there was ‘an indication of suboptimal performance that appears to be neutralised by retraining’ (‘Analysis of a cluster of surgical failures. Application to a series of neonatal arterial switch operations’ *J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg*. 1994 Mar;107[3]:914-23). After retraining, 34 of his next 35 operations were successful. He argued constantly that surgeons needed to analyse their results. He researched innovative ways of reducing risk and increasing patient safety; he worked with Formula One to determine the management of pitstops, applying his findings to improve transfers from operating theatres, and studied data on plane ‘near misses’ collected by the Civil Aviation Authority. He was an adviser for the inquiry into child heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary. He developed a series of innovative surgical procedures, including the ‘Great Ormond shunt’, used to treat a complex defect, ‘the blue baby with tetralogy of Fallot’. He published more than 300 papers and was editor of the influential textbook *Surgery for congenital heart defects* (London, Grune & Stratton, 1983), now in its third edition. He also wrote an autobiography *Humanity & humility: 40 years in children’s heart surgery*, published in 2020. After retiring from the NHS in 2006 at the age of 65, he continued in private practice but had to stop working in 2010 after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He was vice president of Chain of Hope, which provides heart treatment to children in 32 countries. In 2011 the American Association for Thoracic Surgery presented him with its scientific achievement award, its most prestigious honour. Outside medicine, he enjoyed fast cars and began each morning with a 5.30am swim. De Leval died from complications of Parkinson’s disease and cardiac and neurological issues on 26 June 2022. He was 81. He was survived by his wife Véronique ‘Vicky’ (née Laumont) and their two daughters Nathalie and Fabienne.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010151
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Mills, Frank Harland (1910 - 2008)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Miles Little
Publication Date 2013-09-30 2013-12-09
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004400-E004499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376625376625
Occupation Cardiac surgeon General surgeon
Details Frank Harland Mills was a pioneering Australian heart surgeon. He was born on 20 June 1910 in Armidale, New South Wales, and grew up on the south coast of the state, mostly around Ulladulla. Frank's mother died when he was young, and his father, a local magistrate, had to raise Frank, his brother Roy, sister Joyce and an older sister (who was killed in a car crash at the age of 18) on his own. Frank described his childhood as idyllic, free and full of adventure. He claimed never to have worn shoes until he went to school. He fished and swam, climbed trees, shot rabbits, ate shellfish and played with the local children. He won a scholarship to Wollongong High and went on to the University of Sydney to study medicine. He graduated in 1933, and was a junior resident at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1934, where he was paid 30 shillings a week. He became involved with Frank Rundle's work on thyroid disease, work which he developed further when he went to London on a Walter and Eliza Hall travelling fellowship to gain his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. He studied for his fellowship with his close friend Edward 'Weary' Dunlop (later Sir Edward), whose heroism on the Burma-Thai railroad is widely celebrated. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Frank delivered a Hunterian lecture on thyroid disease in London. He returned to Sydney just as the war began, and was appointed as an assistant surgeon at Royal Prince Alfred and St Vincent's hospitals until he was called up. He sailed in the *Queen Mary* (via Antarctica) to Singapore with the 10th Australian General Hospital. When Singapore was invaded by the Japanese, Frank set up a small hospital in two or three houses with large rooms. He looked after about 250 wounded soldiers under harrowing conditions, with the fighting at times just 300 metres away. He had little equipment, few supplies and the bombardment was almost continuous. When Singapore fell on 15 February 1942, Frank was sent to Changi until June, when the imprisoned troops were divided into A and B Forces. A Force was sent to Thailand, and B Force, which Frank joined, went to Sandakan in Borneo. Treating illness in Sandakan required ingenuity, courage and stamina from both patients and doctors. Supplies had to be improvised, grown or stolen. Peptic ulcers were treated with emulsions made of the alkaline ash from fires. Tropical ulcers on the legs were patiently cleaned and dressed with a strong solution of wood ash. Amputations were rare in Sandakan, although common in other camps. After about 15 months in Sandakan, in October 1943, the officers were taken from the camp and moved to Kuching. Most of the Kuching prisoners were still alive at the end of the war nearly two years later, whereas only six of the 2,000 Sandakan prisoners survived the infamous Sandakan death march between February and June 1945. In Kuching, Frank occupied himself by designing a heart-lung machine - a project he was to work on when he returned to Sydney and civilian life. The oxygenator of his device was a bamboo tube, whose tiny natural holes allowed oxygen to permeate the blood in the machine. The work of Gibbon in the US, generously funded by General Motors, progressed more rapidly, and Frank abandoned his work before all his technical problems were resolved. Frank gained his fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1947. Sir Hugh Poate asked him to become his assistant at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney and expanded Frank's interest in thyroid surgery. A Carnegie fellowship allowed him to visit most of the major surgical centres in the US and the UK, and he came to know many of the surgeons who founded modern surgery - people such as Lord Brock, Alfred Blalock, Edward Churchill, Francis Moore, Hank Bahnson and Frank Spencer. These men were particularly influential in starting cardiac surgery, and Frank too began to operate on the heart and great blood vessels in the late 1940s. This new-fangled and dangerous surgery was not encouraged by the administration at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Undeterred, Frank continued to perform operations for coarctation of the aorta, patent ductus and mitral stenosis. His series of mitral valvotomies was enormous by any standards, and his results were incomparably good. He himself survived some complex surgery for peptic ulcer, and rapidly returned to work. Over the ensuing years, in the 1950s and 1960s, he pioneered peripheral vascular surgery, and surgery of the liver and the pancreas in Sydney. More than anything, he brought something special to surgical training. He had seen how Blalock, Churchill and Francis Moore had implemented training schemes that encouraged the best trainees to develop skills as surgeons and investigators. Frank worked hard to bring the same environment to Australia, to nurture talent and stimulate enquiry. Frank married Elayne Smith in October 1960. They had a daughter Corinna and a son, Jonathan. Frank himself developed cancer in the early 1970s, and survived for 37 years after his surgery. His survival meant that he enjoyed the company and support of his wife Elayne, and was able to see Jonathan and Corinna make their own lives. He watched with particular pride as Jonathan developed his distinguished career as a composer, becoming director of the Edinburgh Festival. Frank was particularly moved by Jonathan's now famous *Sandakan threnody*, a major composition reflecting on the cruelty and courage shown in the prison camp. In retirement, Frank travelled, entertained innumerable friends of all ages, swam daily at Bondi, ate well, and drank wine with discretion and expertise - both he and Elayne were members of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, which brought together wine enthusiasts, and Frank was one of the 11 founders of the Rothbury Estate winery in the Hunter valley. His longevity (he was 97 when he died) he ascribed to his regular contact with bacteria from the Bondi sewage (until the long ocean outfall was installed about 1990), which he believed developed a range of skills for his immune system, making him resistant to chance infection. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1990 for his services to medicine, and the University of Sydney conferred on him a doctorate of medicine in 2005. He died on the morning of 2 April 2008.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004442
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Reid, Kenneth Grant (1938 - 1989)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

First Title value, for Searching Annamunthodo, Sir Harry (1920 - 1986)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-04-17
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007000-E007099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379268379268
Occupation Cardiac surgeon General surgeon
Details Harry Annamunthodo was born on 26 April 1920 in British Guiana, now Guyana. He was proud to claim as an ancestor an Indian Sepoy transported after the Mutiny. He was educated at Queen's College, Georgetown, before entering the London Hospital Medical College in 1941, at that time evacuated to Cambridge. He was awarded prizes in anatomy, surgery, medicine and pathology before qualifying in 1946. After being house surgeon to Sir Henry Souttar he spent several years within the orbit of the London gaining surgical experience, passing his FRCS in 1951. It was always his ambition to pursue an academic career in the Caribbean and in 1953 he was appointed lecturer in the new surgical department of the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. In 1961 he became a professor and head of the department. He was Hunterian Professor in 1960 and he spent a year as Rockefeller research fellow in cardiac surgery preparatory to establishing the new discipline in Jamaica. He was dedicated to making his department the ultimate referral centre for the area and to this end he gathered round him academic surgeons of like mind and travelled round the island establishing strong links in undergraduate and postgraduate training with the surgeons of Trinidad and Barbados. Communal violence marred his latter years in Jamaica and within the University he was increasingly frustrated by the deterioration in the high academic and moral standards that he had striven to maintain for so long. It was not wholly with regret that he resigned from the Chair in 1980 and spent his last years as a professor at the University of Kebangsaan in Kuala Lumpur. He retired to Florida with his wife, Margaret, whom he had married in 1954. Despite his honours he remained a simple but hospitable man, happy in his home life and interested in philately and the culture of mango trees. His wife, a son and three daughters survived his death on 6 September 1986.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007085
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Sturridge, Marvin Francis (1926 - 2017)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Tom Treasure
Publication Date 2017-02-17 2017-05-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009300-E009399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381496381496
Occupation Cardiac surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Marvin Sturridge was a consultant thoracic surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital, London. He was born on 12 September 1926 to Frank Sturridge, a doctor, and Helen Sturridge. He was the third son of what was to be a family of seven brothers and a sister, Gloria, who only lived ten days. He and all his siblings were delivered by Uncle Reg Sturridge at home. At the age of six, having had measles along with his brothers, Marvin developed an abscess which led to streptococcal septicaemia. This was in the 1930's; there were no antibiotics. The infection lodged in his joints, causing severe damage to both hips and shoulders. This resulted a lifelong disability, with which he lived and worked with stoicism. During this time, Marvin was looked after by a doctor to whom he was particularly grateful because, unlike others, he did not sit on his bed, anticipating the excruciating pain the movement would cause. This thoughtful care, which he reflected on, was part of the inspiration that set the course of Marvin's life and the gentleness which he always exhibited with his own patients. Marvin was confined to bed for the next two years. Initially, there was doubt whether he would walk again, and he said it was thanks to his brothers who, not given to undue sympathy, told him he would never walk again. That made him the more determined to get on his feet, for which he was eternally grateful. He was given a tricycle, which helped him, very slowly, to regain strength in his legs, and eventually he was able to walk. His brothers, Arthur and Jerome, were at Ladycross Prep School in Seaford, and Marvin was eventually deemed well enough to join them there as a boarder. While there, he had a recurrence of his illness, this time in his right shoulder, and again, recovery was very slow. In 1941, he was accepted at University College School, then just down the road, where he enjoyed great success as cox in the school's rowing eight, his first sporting experience. It was from there that he gained entry to the Middlesex Hospital as a student, joining his brother Jerome. He had further recurrences of his illness until 1947, when penicillin finally eradicated the infection. After qualifying in 1952, he did house officer jobs at the Middlesex and was surgical registrar there and at St Andrew's Hospital, Billericay. Around this time, while working for his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, in his own words: 'There came a young woman of striking beauty, who by virtue of playing hard to get, became my irresistible object of desire.' This was the lovely June Rowley. Their first date was to the funfair on Hampstead Heath in August 1956 and they married on 8 February 1958. Keen to pursue a surgical career, he applied for various posts in cardiothoracic and plastic surgery; he was informed by a senior surgeon that there was no future in plastic surgery so he chose the alternative. In the early 1960's, Marvin and June, with their two very young children, moved to Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic, where he worked with John Kirklin for a year. This was barely six or seven years after Kirklin reported the first successful series of operations on cardiopulmonary bypass. Returning to London from the Mayo Clinic, he was appointed first assistant in surgery on a rotation that took him to the Brompton, the London Chest and the National Heart hospitals. He was appointed as a consultant at the Middlesex and at the London Chest hospitals. In addition to adult work, he did congenital heart surgery in children, having trained with Kirklin, Brock and Holmes Sellors. When the paediatric cardiologist retired during the 1980s, he conferred with his colleagues and saw that these operations, which he loved to do and did well, should be done in dedicated centres. Another very special part of his work was thymectomy for myasthenia gravis, which he did most weeks as an honorary consultant thoracic surgeon to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square. Marvin was a fine example of a London teaching hospital surgeon of this era. He had a sound knowledge of applied physiology honed with Kirklin at the Mayo Clinic and Russell Brock at the Brompton. With Kirklin he studied the metabolic rate after cardiac surgery and published the study in the *Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery* in 1964 ('Basal metabolic rate after cardiovascular surgery' *J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg*. 1964 Mar;47:298-307). While at the Brompton, he did a meticulous study of the tenuous blood supply of trachea and proximal bronchi. This gained him his master of surgery degree and was evident in his clinical expertise in managing the pneumonectomy space. Persuaded somehow that an MS in the library of the University of London was sufficient, he didn't publish the work. Well after his retirement, much less informative images of the vasculature were shown at the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons and Marvin was persuaded to get out the thesis. The images were at last published after more than 40 years in the *Annals of Thoracic Surgery* in 2007 ('Blood supply of the trachea and proximal bronchi' *Ann Thorac Surg*. 2007 Aug;84[2]:675). Between these publications, he was an author on more the 50 papers, covering a range of important contributions to the science of cardiothoracic surgery. He wrote a textbook of thoracic surgery with his senior colleague, Jack Belcher, which reached a fifth edition as *Belcher's thoracic surgical management* in 1985 (London, Baillière Tindall). Marvin was an outstanding teacher of clinical medicine and always had a firm of students. He was also a superb apprentice master in the operating theatre, teaching the essential craftwork of surgery to the many rotating registrars who went on to work in other specialties, as well as many specialist registrars who became consultant surgeons in the rapidly growing specialty of cardiac surgery in the 1970's to 1990's. What was remarkable was his stamina and good humour, when only those who knew him well realised how often he had episodes of pain, particularly in his hips. In his sixties, Marvin's hips began to cause episodic severe pain but, fearing that surgery might make things worse, he procrastinated until retirement and then went to see Sarah Muirhead-Allwood, the doyenne of revision hip surgery. He gave up his beloved pipe and, although not easy one suspects for either surgeon or patient, the operations were an eventual great success and made him two inches taller. He wrote to his surgeon 'now for the first time in my life I understand why people go on walks for pleasure'. Sometimes he reflected that it was a pity he didn't go sooner, but when asked if he was bitter or resentful about his childhood illness which left him partially disabled, his face lit up and he said: 'Absolutely not, why would I? It made me the person I am today and dictated the path I took.' Our memory of Marvin in his heyday was of a man of dapper appearance, an immaculately tailored suit with a special hanger and an inside pocket for his stethoscope, never without his bow tie, yellow socks and his pipe. He loved cars and in the early fifties he competed, with his brother Jerome, in the London Motor Club Rally to Wales in a Sunbeam Talbot 90, a rally lasting some 36 hours, finishing a very respectable 38th place out of 300 entries. Marvin and June retired to Felpham, Sussex in 1991 to a cottage where the family had had many happy holidays. With his new hips, he was now able to walk along the seafront to the Boat House Café to meet with friends for a cappuccino. He latterly had to use a stick and later a scooter, but he was determined to get there. In March 2014 he suffered a subdural haematoma and had surgery and months of hospitalisation. Wheelchair life bored him and, again, he was determined to walk. His nurses had to fit an alarm to his wheelchair to alert them when he decided to walk on his own. Although his faculties were failing, he looked forward to doing the cryptic crossword on Wednesdays, always with a smile, and this he did right up to the day he left us. Marvin Sturridge died on 19 January 2017, aged 90, and was survived by his wife June, his four children, Paul, Jacky, Nicola and Jonathan (always known as 'Joe'), and six grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009313
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Aberdeen, Eoin (1924 - 1986)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-04-17
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007000-E007099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379252379252
Occupation Cardiac surgeon Thoracic surgeon Trauma surgeon
Details Eoin Aberdeen was born in Melbourne in 1924 and qualified in medicine there in 1948. Before coming to England in 1955 he was a medical and surgical registrar at the Royal Children's Hospital and a flying doctor in North-West Australia. After a spell in the burns unit at Birmingham he became surgical registrar in the thoracic unit at Great Ormond Street having passed his FRCS in 1956. He returned to Melbourne to continue his paediatric surgical training but soon returned to the Hospital for Sick Children in London as senior registrar in the thoracic unit. After a year in the United States with Dr Frank Gerbode at Stanford University he returned to Great Ormond Street where, in 1963, he was appointed consultant thoracic surgeon. His work there concentrated on open-heart surgery in infants and small children. He was a perfectionist; each case was meticulously investigated preoperatively, complete and detailed records of all procedures were made and he concentrated on achieving a high standard of postoperative care. His work, especially on transposition of the great arteries, brought him international fame. In 1971, at the height of his success, he left Great Ormond Street for the United States where he felt he would have better opportunity to pursue his interests in measurement and documentation, in particular in the management of complex congenital cardiac anomalies. He was first, chief of cardiac surgery at the Children's Hospital, Philadelphia, from 1971 to 1974, then in similar posts at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York (1974-76) and the Children's Hospital, Newark (1976-78). When he resigned his post at Newark he decided to quit cardiac surgery altogether and in 1980 took a post as emergency-room physician at the Medical Center at Syracuse University. His failure in the USA was partly self-inflicted. He was a highly intelligent man with an almost encyclopaedic grasp of paediatric and cardiac surgery. By means of computerised data storage and retrieval he had built up an unrivalled collection of relevant articles, each carefully annotated. His readiness to compare results of surgical treatment did not always make him friends but he never spared himself criticism. In 1983 he was stricken by severe illness which added to his troubles but he bore all with courage, resignation and humour. He died on 24 March 1986 aged 62. He was supported throughout by his wife, Virginia who survived him together with their two daughters and one son.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007069
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Bigelow, Wilfred Gordon (1913 - 2005)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2005-09-07
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000000-E000099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372210372210
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Wilfred Gordon ‘Bill’ Bigelow, who helped develop the first electronic pacemaker, was a professor of cardiac surgery at the University of Toronto and a pioneering heart surgeon. He was born in Brandon, Manitoba, in 1913. His father, Wilfred Bigelow, had founded the first medical clinic in Canada. Bill trained in medicine at the University of Toronto and did his internship at the Toronto General Hospital, during which time he had to amputate a young man’s fingers because of frostbite, leading Bill to research the condition. During the second world war, he served with the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, in a field transfusion unit and then as a battle surgeon with the 6th Canadian Casualty Clearing Station in England and Europe, where he saw many more soldiers with frostbitten limbs. After the war, he returned to a surgical residency in Toronto, followed by a graduate fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He returned to Toronto in 1947 as a staff general surgeon. In 1950 he became a research fellow in the university department of surgery. He was made an assistant professor in 1953 and a full professor in 1970. He researched into hypothermia in a cold-storage room in the basement of the Banting Institute. He theorised that cooling patients before an operation would reduce the amount of oxygen the body required and slow the circulation, allowing longer and safer access to the heart. This work led to the development of a cooling technique for use during heart operations. He also discovered that he could restart the heart by stimulating it with a probe at regular intervals, work which led him on to develop the first electronic pacemaker, in collaboration with John Callaghan and the electrical engineer John Hopps. He published extensively and received many awards, including the Order of Canada and the honorary Fellowship of our College. He was President of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery and the Society for Vascular Surgery. He was predeceased by his wife, Margaret Ruth Jennings, and is survived by his daughter, three sons and three grandchildren. He died from congestive heart failure on 27 March 2005.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000023
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Monro, James Lawrence (1939 - 2013)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Steve Karran
Publication Date 2013-09-30 2014-02-24
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004400-E004499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376626376626
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details James Lawrence 'Jim' Monro was a cardiac surgeon at Southampton General Hospital, where he successfully developed the service for infants and children. Jim's medical lineage could hardly have been stronger. He was born in Singapore on 17 November 1939, at the start of the Second World War, the son of Jack Monro, professor of surgery in Singapore, and Landon Carter Monro née Reed. His father's Scottish antecedents, a branch of clan Monro of Fyrish, Easter Ross, included, in the 18th and 19th centuries, four medical directors of Bethlem Hospital, commonly known as 'Bedlam'. Jim's American mother was the granddaughter of Major Walter Reed of the US Army Medical Corps, who had identified the *aedes aegypti* mosquito as the vector for yellow fever. The Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington is named in his honour. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941 and the entry of Japan into the war, Jim's father managed to get his wife, Jim and his baby sister Mary on to the evacuation ship *SS Ulysses*. He stayed behind to care for the injured civilians and, with the fall of Singapore, was interned in Changi prison. His family managed to reach Perth, Australia, and then went on, six months later, to San Francisco by sea and eventually to Landon's family in Virginia. On VE Day, Jim, his sister and mother sailed back to the UK on the *Queen Mary*, zig-zagging across the Atlantic at 30 knots to avoid any remaining U-boats. They returned to witness bombed-out buildings and the devastation of post-war London. Initially they stayed with relatives near Richmond, and Jim started to go to school in Putney. After VJ Day, the family were reunited with an emaciated Jack Monro. He was given extra rations and was soon able to attend a refresher course at his alma mater, the London Hospital. Six months later, his recovery was sufficient for the whole family to return to a comfortable government house in Singapore. At the age of nine Jim went back to the UK for his schooling, first in Barnstaple and then at Sherborne. His parents also eventually returned to the UK, and Jack Monro was a consultant general surgeon at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Swindon. Jim spent time with his father in the operating theatre, and even removed an appendix before ever becoming a medical student. Jim's poor A level grades prevented him from taking up an offer at Pembroke College, Cambridge, but he gained a place at this father's old medical school with the help of a 'crammer'. At the London his attitude to exams improved and he soon won a scholarship and several prizes. He was not alone, however, in enjoying, and fully participating in, medical student activities, both on and off the pitch. Cars and stuffed monkeys featured; a Bentley-owning Robert Winston, the future IVF innovator, was one of his contemporaries. Jim passed the conjoint exam in January 1964 and gained his MB BS in May 1964. He was also awarded the Frederick Treves prize in surgery. Directly after qualifying, he held two house posts at the London, under Clifford Wilson and Jack Ledingham in medicine and David Ritchie in surgery. Suitably inspired by this lively Scottish surgeon, Jim soon headed for the primary FRCS course. He passed this in January 1966, and then worked at Birmingham Accident Hospital as a casualty officer. He then moved south again, and arrived at St James' Hospital, Balham, to work under Dan Desmond and Norman Tanner. In March 1967 he returned as a registrar to David Ritchie at the London Hospital, and worked on the vascular surgery unit with Douglas Eadie, and also on a nascent cardiac surgical unit with John Weaver, who had studied open heart surgery with Brian Barratt-Boyes in Auckland, New Zealand. Barratt-Boyes had pioneered the use of human aortic valves (homografts) with good results, and John Weaver's team was now replicating this success. Around this time, Christiaan Barnard was also starting cardiac transplantation in South Africa. With the blessing of John Weaver, Jim then went to work with Brian Barratt-Boyes at the Greenlane Hospital. These years were adventurous, with a particularly fruitful extension of his stay for a second year of training. By this time, Brian Barratt-Boyes had started using a cooling technique in small babies. He had performed this with success in 200 patients by the end of Jim's second year and this experience proved particularly valuable for Jim in later years. Barratt-Boyes subsequently described Jim as one of the best three young cardiac surgeons he had helped train. Jim returned to the cardiac unit at the London in 1972. Having been interviewed unsuccessfully for a consultant post in Edinburgh, Jim was tempted by an invitation from Keith Ross to apply to join him in Southampton. On 11 May 1973 he was duly appointed and his outstanding career as a cardiac surgeon took wing. Keith operated on relatively few children, so Jim was asked to develop the paediatric cardiac surgery. Over the years, the number of these patients treated grew rapidly. Jim, meanwhile, also played a full part in the treatment of adults, so that over 300 cases of open heart surgery were performed annually. In Southampton, the old tuberculosis sanatorium at the Western Hospital had become the cardiothoracic hospital but, by 1981, the cardiac unit had split off and relocated to the General Hospital. Cardiologists Alan Johnson and Neville Conway were soon providing a stream of patients requiring coronary artery bypass grafts. A major advance in angiography for childhood congenital defects occurred with the arrival of Barry Keeton, who had trained at the Mayo Clinic around the same time as the advent of echocardiography. Vast improvements in post-operative and, particularly, intensive anaesthetic care were likewise provided by John Manners and John Edwards. The cooling technique that Jim had learnt in New Zealand soon proved highly beneficial, with, for example, a successful repair by Jim in 1974 of a seven-week-old baby with persistent truncus arteriosis (a previously rapidly fatal cardiac deformity). Complete repairs of Fallot's tetralogy in babies likewise now replaced the temporary Blalock or Waterstone 'shunts', which needed full repair at a later date. The advent of therapy with prostaglandin, which opened the ductus arteriosis and thereby increased lung perfusion, proved another significant advance in the treatment of 'blue babies', producing dramatic post-operative benefit. Among the large number of tiny babies that he operated on was one weighing less than a bag of sugar. Jim was one of the most technically accomplished cardiac surgeons of his generation and his international reputation attracted many junior colleagues to work with him in Southampton. He was a genuine team player, always courteous and polite. Junior staff were inspired by his unflagging enthusiasm and keenness to teach anyone who wished to learn. They found he was, moreover, always helpful and supportive. His determination to develop and improve the treatment of his young charges led to a large number (over 150) of peer-viewed papers, as well as two influential textbooks (written with Gerald Shore) - *A colour atlas of cardiac surgery. Acquired heart disease* (London, Wolfe Medical, 1982) and *A colour atlas of cardiac surgery. Congenital heart disease* (London, Wolfe Medical, 1984). Even towards the end of his career, he continued to operate on the most complex and difficult problems in these babies (with a seven-hour procedure being undertaken on his last list), whilst actively and enthusiastically training his junior staff in less complicated procedures. By the time of his retirement, he had operated on the full range of cardiac abnormalities in 2,000 babies with outstanding results. This was all in addition to operating on some 10,000 adult patients. In 2001, in response to the Bristol inquiry into high death rates among babies who had undergone heart surgery, Jim was asked to chair a committee to review paediatric heart surgery across the UK. The Monro report called for a decrease in the number of units performing children's heart surgery. To Jim's immense disappointment, the committee's recommendations were not acted upon. Jim's standing with his surgical colleagues was reflected in his appointment first as a council member, vice president and then president in 2003 of the European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery. He was also president of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland from 2000 to 2002. All of these achievements, however, were only part of the man. The parents and families of his young patients speak in glowing terms of his kindness and the support shown to them through such desperate times. Although his great charm earned him the sobriquet of 'Gentleman Jim', his real qualities were much deeper. He was a true leader. In 1973 Jim met Jane Dunlop. Within three weeks, he had the good sense to propose, and, after a week of diligent enquiries by Jane in relevant quarters, their engagement was duly achieved. Marriage ensued on 29 September 1973, four weeks after he started his clinical commitments at Southampton. They had three children - Charles, Rosie and Andrew. Despite the pressures of work, Jim managed to enjoy a full family life, with tennis, golf, skiing and horse riding playing prominent roles. Earlier in his life Jim had played rugby (breaking his jaw twice), and had represented Scotland at rifle shooting. He had a decent golfing handicap. He was also a brave and accomplished skier, winning slalom races against Continental colleagues at European surgical gatherings. His ability in a dinghy was less apparent, however, with his drenching providing considerable amusement for 300 spectators during an island trip. Following his retirement he also became a fine draughtsman and water-colourist. In 1997, Jim developed colonic carcinoma. This was treated successfully by his old friend, Bill Heald, in Basingstoke. He was able to resume working after this, however, in 2006, two years after his retirement, prostate cancer was also diagnosed and treatment commenced. Jim died on 29 August 2013, aged 73, and was survived by his wife and family. At a commemoration of his life at Romsey Abbey, tributes of admiration, respect and love were paid to him, not only by colleagues from far and wide, but by many of his former patients, whose lives he had not only saved but had otherwise transformed by his continuing care and support.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004443
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Melrose, Denis Graham (1921 - 2007)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2009-01-16
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000500-E000599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372765372765
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Denis Melrose played a crucial role in designing and developing the first heart-lung machine. He was born in Cape Town on 20 June 1921, the son of Thomas Robert Gray Melrose, a surgeon, and Floray Collings. The family went to England before the Second World War, and Denis was educated at Sedbergh and University College, Oxford, going on to University College Hospital for his clinical studies. There he was taught by Sir Thomas Lewis, the cardiologist. After qualifying, he did junior jobs at Hammersmith and Redhill County Hospital, Edgware, before serving in the RNVR from 1946 to 1948. He returned to the Royal Postgraduate Hospital Hammersmith as a lecturer when Ian Air was the professor of surgery. Air encouraged Melrose in his dream of making a heart-lung machine. At that time a Hungarian refugee, Francis Kellerman, had set up a medical instrument firm called New Electronic Products (NEP) and generously offered to collaborate with Melrose in designing the Melrose-NEP heart-lung machine. This was first used at Hammersmith in 1957 on a patient with an atrial septal defect, who survived more than 25 years. The machine was soon used in other UK centres, New Zealand and Australia. In 1959 a group of Russian surgeons visited Hammersmith, decided to buy a Melrose machine, and Denis accompanied a team which included Bill Cleland, Hugh Bentall, John Beard, the anaesthetist, and Arthur Hollman, the cardiologist. There was half a ton of equipment. Four children with severe congenital heart lesions were successfully operated on, as well as two others. Melrose’s second great contribution to cardiac surgery was his introduction of a method of reversibly stopping the heart beat using cold solutions of potassium salts. In 1956 he was Nuffield travelling fellow in the USA and Fulbright fellow in 1957, becoming associate in surgery at Stanford University Medical School in 1958. Melrose was successively promoted to reader and then professor and continued to work at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School until his retirement in 1983. Melrose had the ideal temperament to lead innovative methods in medicine: exceptionally friendly and out-going, he was full of fun and at the same time exceedingly practical. In 1945 he married Ann Warter, and had two sons. His hobbies included skiing and sailing. He died in Ibiza on 2 July 2007.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000582
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Chang, Victor Peter (Chang Yang Him) (1936 - 1991)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-07
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007800-E007899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380039380039
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Victor Chang was born in Sydney in 1936 and received his medical training at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney. After qualifying in 1960 he came to London to train in cardiothoracic surgery at the Brompton Hospital, spent a year at the Mayo Clinic, and returned to St Vincent's in 1972, where he won an international reputation for coronary by-pass operations. In 1984 he started the National Heart Transplant Unit at St Vincent's which within seven years reported 197 heart transplant operations and 14 heart-lung transplant operations, with a one-year survival of more than 90%. Victor Chang was by now the best known surgeon in Australia, and had built up an enormous practice not only there, but also in Asia. Although he went out of his way to protect his patients (many of whom, such as Kerry Packer, were famous) from the intrusive attentions of the media, he managed to raise funds for research into an artificial heart, as many of them became his vociferous supporters. He was also working on an affordable heart valve, having in mind the needs of China and other developing countries. For this he was made an honorary professor of surgery in the Chinese Academy of Medical Science. Sadly all of this came to an abrupt end. He was shot dead in the streets of Sydney on 4 July 1991, leaving his wife, a daughter and two sons.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007856
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching O'Malley, Eoin (1919 - 2007)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2008-08-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000500-E000599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372731372731
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Eoin O’Malley was a cardiac surgeon and a past president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He was born on 5 April 1919 in Galway, where his father was professor of surgery. From Clongowes Wood College he went to medical school, at first in Galway and later at University College, Dublin, where he proved himself a formidable debater and rugby football player, and won prizes and distinctions in every subject. He completed house appointments in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital and went on to specialise in surgery at Southend General Hospital and the Lahey Clinic in Boston. He was appointed to the consultant staff of the Mater Hospital as a general and cardiac surgeon in 1950 and became professor of surgery in 1958. At first an all round general surgeon, he was one of the first to specialise in cardiac surgery and succeeded in setting up a specialist unit, which was later named after him. As a teacher he was noted as a skilled and thoughtful lecturer and a sympathetic examiner. As a trainer of young surgeons he took care to see that his pupils expanded their vision by going abroad to other centres for clinical experience and research. Indeed, to encourage his colleagues to travel, he founded the Irish Surgical Travellers Club. Together with other Irish professors of surgery, Eoin organised a national surgical training programme, a planned rotation scheme, entry to which was to be by competitive examination. He soon became involved in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, was elected to its council in 1965 and became president in 1983. His presidency was marked by the celebration of the bicentenary of the college. His interests outside surgery included fishing, meteorology, literature, theatre, history and politics. Eoin married Una O’Higgins, a young solicitor, in 1952. Una was the daughter of the Irish national hero Kevin O’Higgins, the hard man of the liberation movement and first minister of justice in the new republic, who was assassinated when Una was only five months old. Later Una became a nationally celebrated poet, whose verse sang of peace and forgiveness. Una was a prime mover in the reconciliation movement and a founder of the Glencree Reconciliation Centre. They had six children, of whom Kevin has followed his father and grandfather into surgery. A man of great dignity, utterly without bombast or arrogance, Eoin was the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and distinctions, including the honorary Fellowship of our College. Enid Taylor
Resource Identifier RCS: E000547
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Caves, Philip Kennedy (1940 - 1978)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-11-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006300-E006399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378553378553
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Born in Belfast in 1940, Caves was educated at Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He entered medical school at Queen's University, Belfast, in 1958, graduated in 1964, and began a period of general surgical training in Belfast and Edinburgh. After taking the Edinburgh Fellowship in 1968 he began his training in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. In 1969 he took the English FRCS before moving to the cardiothoracic unit at Brompton Hospital in 1970. There he was introduced to the cardiac surgery that became his life's work. In 1971 he was awarded the British- American Research Fellowship of the British and American Heart Associations, and began work at Stanford University, California, under Dr Norman Shumway. This proved a particularly happy association and he remained at Stanford to become chief resident in 1972 and staff surgeon in the cardiac transplantation service in 1973. In July 1974 he returned to Britain to become senior lecturer in cardiac surgery in the department of clinical surgery at Edinburgh University. There he became particularly active in the new techniques of cardiac surgery in neonates and infants. In 1975 he was appointed to the first Chair of Cardiac Surgery created in Glasgow. As professor in the University and honorary consultant cardiac surgeon to the Greater Glasgow Health Board he devoted himself to the organisation and development of a comprehensive adult and paediatric cardiac surgical service for the west of Scotland. While in Stanford he had pioneered the use of endomyocardial biopsy in the early diagnosis of transplant rejection. With this work and his experience in coronary artery surgery behind him, as well as his interest and expertise in paediatric cardiac surgery, he rapidly established himself as one of the leading authorities among cardiac surgeons in Britain. He was much in demand to lecture in Britain and North America. In 1974 he was awarded the European Travelling Fellowship of the British Heart Foundation and in 1978 the Ballahouston and Lister Travelling Fellowship from Glasgow University. He combined great personal charm with enormous appetite for work, whether physical or intellectual. His surgical technique was admired by all those fortunate enough to benefit from his tuition, and his lectures, whether to lay or professional audiences, were of the same high standard. He was a convinced and practising Christian whose kindness and understanding contributed to the welfare of his patients as well as to the establishment of a local and devoted team of colleagues. He died suddenly on 23 July, 1978, leaving his wife Margaret and a daughter and two sons.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006370
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching McMillan, Ian Kenneth Ramsay (1922 - 1989)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-06-15
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007400-E007499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379680379680
Occupation Cardiac surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Ian McMillan was born on 14 June 1922 in Birmingham, the second son of Kenneth Holl MacMillan, (Lives 1974-82) consultant gynaecologist and obstetrician, and Elizabeth (née Smyth). His uncle was a chest physician, his wife a physiotherapist and her parents general practitioners. He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, St Paul's, London (scholar), Jesus College, Cambridge (exhibitioner) and St Thomas's Hospital (exhibitioner). After qualifying in 1946 he served as Major, RAMC as a specialist physiologist in Germany and the UK (1947-1950). On return he was the Mackenzie-Mackinnon Research Fellow, RCS (1951-1954) working on the development of cardiac surgery and by-pass, later serving as RCS representative on the RCS, RCP joint committee in cardiology in 1967. He was visiting scientist National Heart Institute, Bethesda (1954-1955). He passed the FRCS in 1956 and was senior lecturer surgical unit at St Thomas's Hospital before becoming consultant thoracic surgeon to the Wessex cardiac and thoracic unit, Southampton, in 1959. He was also honorary lecturer in cardiac surgery, Royal Postgraduate Medical School. After the death of Paul Chin he became head of the Wessex unit. His contribution to the science and literature of cardiac and thoracic surgery was considerable, including the design of his pulse duplicator, the study of heart value function by high speed cine-photography and the first paper from the United Kingdom on electrical defibrillation of the heart in 1952. He was held in high regard as a hard-working, skillful and meticulous surgeon, an affable 'big' man. He retired in 1987. In 1950 lie married Diana Sandiland and they had one son and two daughters, Andrew and Fiona becoming doctors and Cynthia, a dentist. He enjoyed cricket and rugby in his youth and later, fishing and tennis. He obtained great pleasure from classical music and loved to travel. He was a founder-member of Pete's Club, an international surgical club, and established a visiting fellowship for surgeons in training at the Massachusetts General Hospital to come to the Southampton Unit. He died on 21 September 1989.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007497
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Pilcher, Robin Sturtevant (1902 - 1994)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-25
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008200-E008299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380442380442
Occupation Cardiac surgeon General surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Robin Pilcher was born on 22 June 1902 in Northwood, Middlesex, into a family without medical connections, although his younger brother Michael was to follow him into surgery. His father was Thorold Sturtevant Pilcher and his mother Helena, née Neilson. He was a scholar at St Paul's School and a prizewinning student at University College London and at UCH Medical School. He qualified with the conjoint diploma in 1927 and went on to take the MB with a gold medal in the following year. During his junior appointments at UCH he quickly added the MRCP, the FRCS and the MS to an impeccable *curriculum vitae*. Inspired by Wilfred Trotter and C C Choyce he was taken on to the surgical unit and rapidly ascended the ladder, being elected a youthful Professor of Surgery in 1938, a post which he held with distinction throughout his career. Retained in the hospital by the Emergency Medical Service he carried a heavy clinical and teaching burden through all the war years which inevitably restricted his research interests. However he was developing considerable expertise in hand infections and the management of bronchiectasis; after the war he was attached also to the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street, where he pioneered thoracic surgery, reporting an important series of cases of lobectomy for bronchiectasis. When the introduction of antibiotics was reducing the need for pulmonary surgery he started to enter the cardiac field, employing the anastomosis of the internal mammary artery to the coronary circulation for the relief of myocardial ischaemia. However, retirement came too soon to enable him to enjoy the boom in cardiac surgery in either adults or children. Although an astute physician as well as a superb surgical technician, Pilcher's natural modesty and reserve prevented him from taking the prominent rôle on the national stage which his talents could well have justified. He served on the Court of Examiners of the College (being Chairman in 1965) and examined for several universities. He was a member of the MRC War Wounds Committee. Although in private he could show a ready sense of humour he was superficially somewhat austere and not an easy man to know. However his ability as a surgeon and as a teacher gained him the respect of his students and the devotion of his assistants. He married, while still a junior in 1929, Mabel Ethel Pearks, by whom he had two sons and a daughter, none of whom entered the medical profession. He retired in 1967 to a Buckinghamshire village and immersed himself in gardening and village affairs, maintaining a beautiful garden in their elegant 16th century home, although increasing deafness cut him off from old friends and former interests. He died on 10 July 1994, survived by his wife, children and grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008259
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Bloor, Kenneth (1926 - 1986)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-04-24
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007100-E007199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379314379314
Occupation Cardiac surgeon Vascular surgeon
Details Kenneth Bloor was born on 14 May 1926, the son of William and Aida Bloor, of Earlstown, Lancashire. He was educated at Newton-le-Willows Grammar School, from where, with a county scholarship, he went to Manchester University, graduating MB ChB in 1949. He was house surgeon to Professor A M Boyd and house physician to Professor Robert Platt (later Lord Platt of Grindleford). He became research assistant to Professor Boyd in 1950, undertaking the long term follow-up of vascular patients in addition to teaching and clinical work. His MD thesis (1954) described the progress of 1500 patients and a later analysis was dealt with in his Hunterian lecture in 1960. He became FRCS in 1958 and ChM in 1962, the year he went to Glasgow as senior lecturer to Professor C F W Illingworth. There he collaborated in a project on the use of hyperbaric oxygen in the surgery of cerebro-vascular disease and total heart-lung bypass. Back in Manchester in 1964, he established a cardio-vascular research laboratory. He directed studies on reheating in hypothermia, using a microwave resonant cavity, and regeneration after cervico-thoracic sympathectomy. With A G Riddell and others, he developed open heart surgery in Manchester, and he became one of the (then) two cardiac surgeons at Manchester Royal Infirmary, a post he held until two years before his death. He and A G Riddell achieved excellent results in the surgical treatment of portal hypertension and with H F Bassett, he developed the so-called "piggy-back" operation, implanting a second heart into dogs so as to provide a new left ventricle in parallel with their own. Others were to profit from their experience when human heart transplants were developed. He became reader in surgery in 1966 and a part-time consultant in the NHS in 1971, Professor Boyd having retired the year before. He developed a large private practice and he took an active part in the Manchester Independent Medical Association. When the AMI Alexandra Hospital opened in 1981, he was invited to chair the Medical Advisory Committee, serving for three years. Bloor was a first class surgeon. His operative technique was relaxed, unhurried and safe, and this, combined with long clinical experience, enabled him to produce results that attracted patients from all walks. He was known internationally for his contributions to the science and practice of vascular surgery and he was a founder member of the Vascular Surgical Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He was a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and of the editorial board of *Vascular surgery*, New York. In 1985, he delivered the Michael Boyd memorial lecture, an annual commemoration of the life of his former chief, and he discussed inflammatory aneurysms of the abdominal aorta, a lesion first recognised by him and described in the *British journal of surgery* in 1972. History and astronomy were among his leisure interests but his favourite recreation was sailing, many of his holidays being spent visiting Ireland and north west Scotland in his 30 foot yacht. He was twice married, first to Giovanna, daughter of Professor P M S Blackett, FRS (later Lord Blackett, PRS). There were three daughters and a son. Secondly, to Val, his companion of twenty years. He fell ill in the autumn of 1985 and was found to have a malignant gastro-oesophageal lesion. Operations relieved him for a time but he died on 27 February 1986, survived by Val and his children. His professional skills, humour and integrity earned him the respect of patients, colleagues and the many juniors whom he trained. The Medical Advisory Committee of the AMI Alexandra Hospital arranged the Ken Bloor memorial lecture to be delivered annually. The inaugural lecture was delivered by Professor J S P Lumley, Professor of Surgery at St Bartholomew's Hospital, on 1 October 1987, in the medical school of the University of Manchester.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007131
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Richardson, John Patrick (1928 - 1987)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-07-20
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007500-E007599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379779379779
Occupation Cardiac surgeon Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details John Patrick Richardson was born on 18 July 1928 at Port Pirie, South Australia. He was educated at the Christian Brothers' College in Adelaide from which he gained a Commonwealth Government Scholarship to study medicine at the University of Adelaide. He qualified in 1952 and after two years during which he worked in the University he came to England and immediately passed his primary. He worked with George Qvist, Ronald Raven and Norman Tanner before his FRCS. He then spent a year at Addenbrooke's Hospital before obtaining a Fellowship in Cardiovascular Surgery at Baylor University College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. During the following two years he studied at the feet of Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley and had wide experience of cardiovascular investigations and surgical procedures. His return to Adelaide late in 1959 coincided with the opening of a new cardiothoracic surgical unit and by 1965 he was elected to the consultant staff of the Royal Adelaide Hospital, the Adelaide Children's Hospital and the Repatriation General Hospital. In 1967 he was invited to join the staff of St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne where he helped set up the unit for open heart surgery. In 1973 he was appointed senior cardiothoracic surgeon to the Austin Hospital and associate cardiac surgeon to the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne. He retired from active practice in 1978. From 1960 onwards he was engaged in both clinical and laboratory research. He published nigh on 50 papers and spoke regularly at meetings of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand. He introduced computer records to cover all cardiac surgery in South Australia and extended them to include records of cardiac catheterisation and intensive care. In 1969 he visited Papua and New Guinea at the government's request to make an assessment of their requirements for cardiovascular surgery. In 1976 he was responsible for the introduction of a new undergraduate teaching programme in cardiovascular medicine and surgery in cooperation with Professor A E Doyle. He also found time to travel abroad to visit other pioneers in his field from as far apart as Portland, Oregon and Stockholm and most places in between. In August 1978 he was forced to relinquish the surgical side of his practice owing to ill-health. He concentrated on cardiology and devoted himself to workers compensation. In addition he became assistant to the editor of the *Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery* from 1978 to 1980 and then editor from 1980 to 1985, whilst at the same time conducting a consultancy medico-legal practice in cardiovascular and respiratory disease at Epworth Medical Centre. In 1978 he started part-time studies for the degree of Bachelor of Theology which he completed in 1984 majoring in biblical studies and systematic theology. In 1985 he was elected inaugural president of the Melbourne Association of Graduates in Theology, an ecumenical association of those who have a degree from the Melbourne College of Divinity. On 28 November 1953 he married Danielle Griffin. They had two sons and four daughters one of whom gained a PhD in the department of gastroenterology at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne. He died from bowel cancer on 1 May 1987, in Melbourne and is survived by his wife Danielle and his six children - Monique, Anthony, Colette, Simone, Chantal and Damian.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007596
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Parker, David John (1938 - 1998)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-25
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008800-E008899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381013381013
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details John Parker was a consultant cardiac surgeon at St George's Hospital, London. He was born in Harrow on 1 February 1938, where his father, Kenneth Kershaw Parker, was a civil servant and a town planner. His mother was Mary Moore. He was brought up in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), where he attended the David Livingstone School and the Churchill School. He was school captain and captain of rugby, and won a scholarship to St Andrews University. Entering St Andrews in 1956, he won innumerable prizes, and made a name for himself as a formidable debater, becoming president of the Scottish Union of Students from 1961 to 1962. He qualified in 1962 and did his house jobs on the surgical and medical professorial units, staying on as a lecturer in the department of surgery in the University of St Andrews under Sir Donald Douglas and gaining his MRCP in 1966 and FRCS Edinburgh and England in 1967. His rejoining the professorial unit in Dundee in 1967 determined his future career in cardiothoracic surgery and he came to London, to the Brompton Hospital, in 1968. In 1969 he was appointed senior registrar in the London training programme, which included rotation to the National Heart Hospital, and in 1970 he spent a year with John Kirklin in Birmingham, Alabama, as a surgical fellow. His research while there, into lung water, led to an Hunterian Professorship in 1972, the year that he returned to the National Heart Hospital as locum consultant and senior lecturer, a post he held for four years. He was appointed consultant cardiac surgeon to St George's Hospital in 1975 where he re-activated, single-handedly, the cardiac surgical programme, collaborating with Aubrey Leatham, and operating every day, at first with little support. His personal effort and excellent results led to successful expansion of the unit before and after the move to Tooting, and his organisational skills included the successful acquisition and administration of his own departmental budget. He obtained funding from the British Heart Foundation for university chairs in cardiology and cardiovascular pathology at St George's, and from the Government's private finance initiative to build a successful centre for cardiology neurology and surgery at St George's. He was elected President of the British Cardiac Society, the first surgeon to hold this position, and during his tenure of office he organised the purchase of their building in Fitzroy Square and a revision of their constitution, which enabled it to widen its membership to include nurses and other health service professionals. He was President of the cardiothoracic section of the Royal Society of Medicine from 1993 to 1995, and vice-president of the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, and was due to become President in the month of his death. At national level, he was concerned with the RITA trials that compared angioplasty with surgical and medical treatment of coronary disease, the Read Centre on coding and terms for cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery, and the Clinical Standards Advisory Group. He received the Clement Price Thomas award in 1992. Internationally, he was Chairman of the working group on cardiovascular surgery for the European Society of Cardiology. His hobbies included sailing and farming, and he was an honorary consultant in surgery to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution from 1984. He married Veronica (Niki) Good in 1963 and had two sons, Andrew and Simon, and a daughter, Jackie. He died on 23 March 1998 of a brain tumour.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008830
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Yates, Alan Kenneth (1932 - 1990)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-08-14
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007700-E007799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379931379931
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Alan Kenneth Yates was born on 9 December 1932 and after early education entered the University of Sheffield Medical School. During his student years he represented Essex and Yorkshire at swimming, often training at night. He was awarded the University medal for both the second MB and the final MB and collected numerous prizes and gold medals in a variety of clinical subjects. The day after he graduated he married Enid. His house appointments were to the University departments of medicine and surgery at Sheffield and following these he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps for his National Service, initially serving as senior casualty officer at the Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot, and later as junior surgical specialist at Gibraltar Military Hospital. During this time, in addition to his professional commitments he captained the British Army swimming team. On returning to civilian life he was demonstrator of anatomy at Bristol before returning to Sheffield as registrar to the cardiothoracic unit working under Desmond Taylor. This fired his enthusiasm for cardiac surgery and after a further appointment as rotating surgical registrar in Sheffield he was appointed senior registrar at Guy's Hospital, working under Lord Brock and Donald Ross from 1964 to 1968. He impressed his surgical colleagues with his energy, enthusiasm and the high standard of personal care he gave to his patients, but in 1968 he left Guy's in order to take up a vacant appointment at the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield. Sadly this appointment was not up to his expectations owing to a shortage of facilities and restricted financial provision for his department. After about a year he returned to Guy's Hospital as successor to Lord Brock. He tackled his new appointment with his characteristic enthusiasm and vigour and additionally undertook directorship of the intensive care unit. Although critical and outspoken about the failings of any junior, he was always supportive in times of difficulty and he earned great respect from junior medical and nursing staff at Guy's. His morning rounds on Cornelius and Brock wards were always well attended and he demanded optimal standards for every patient under his care. He made valuable contributions to surgical literature on aortic valve disease, supportive perfusion and intensive care and undertook management tasks with the same enthusiasm he gave his clinical work. Indeed, it is said of him that, when a registrar, he had been so involved with his work that he only learnt of the birth of his son, Neil, several days after it had occurred. In the mid-1970's he went to the Middle East to help in establishing cardiac services. On one particularly hot day he plunged into the Mediterranean and swam across the harbour at a speed never seen before by his surgical colleagues. On his return they closely questioned him. He admitted that he had done some swimming in his youth but until hard pressed he concealed the fact that he had swum in the 1954 Olympics. He was a sociable man who loved parties where his expansive personality and sense of humour would burgeon. He was a keen sailor and it was well known that he intended to take early retirement at 60 and sail round the world with his wife. Sadly he developed carcinoma of the caecum and despite operative excision he developed bony and hepatic metastases. He died on 20 November 1990 aged 57 survived by his wife, and four sons. His twenty years' service to intensive care at Guy's is commemorated by naming part of this ward as the Alan Yates ward.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007748
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Cutler, Elliott Carr (1888 - 1947)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-06-20
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004100-E004199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376316376316
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details Born 30 July 1888, the second of the five sons of George Chalmers Cutler, lumber manufacturer and merchant, and Mary Carr Wilson, his wife. He was educated at Volkmann Preparatory School, at Brookline Public School, Massachusetts, and at Harvard, where he graduated in arts 1909, and in medicine 1913. He served as house surgeon and resident surgeon at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital 1913-15 and then joined the Harvard unit at the American ambulance hospital in Paris, before the official entry of the United States into the war. He worked at the Massachusetts General Hospital 1915-16 and at the Rockefeller Institute in New York 1916-17. He was resident surgeon at the Brigham again 1919-21. In 1921 he was appointed associate in surgery at Harvard, and in the following year chairman of the department of surgery and director of the laboratory of surgical research, but in 1924 he resigned these appointments on becoming professor of surgery at the Western Reserve University at Cleveland, Ohio, and chief surgeon at the Lakeside Hospital. At Harvard he had begun his pioneer work in the operative treatment of valvular disease of the heart, performing his first successful operation in 1923. He followed up this work while at Cleveland, publishing a series of epoch-making papers on the surgery of the heart. When Harvey Cushing retired Cutler was the natural successor to be recalled to Boston, and he was duly elected Moseley professor of surgery at Harvard and surgeon-in-chief of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Here he continued his work in thoracic surgery, undertaking among other successful innovations total thyroidectomy for angina pectoris (1934). His only book, *Atlas of Surgical Operations* 1939 in collaboration with Robert Zollinger, is a folio volume, fully illustrated, intended as a young surgeon's guide for the acquisition of a safe technique. Cutler took a leading part in the work of surgical societies. He was a member of the Society of Clinical Surgery, the New England Surgical Society, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, and the American Board of Surgery, the semi-official educational and disciplinary council. The Boston Surgical Society awarded him its most coveted prize, the Henry Jacob Bigelow gold medal. At the very end of his life he was elected president of the American Surgical Association. When America joined in the second world war, Cutler immediately took up the post of chief consultant in surgery to the United States army in Europe with the rank of brigadier, and from 1942 to 1945 had his head¬quarters in London. He was already a personal friend of the leading London surgeons, and his active presence here did much to promote the most friendly co-operation between British and American surgeons. He promoted the regular inter-allied conferences on war medicine 1942-45 (*Report* published 1947) held under the auspices of the Royal Society of Medicine, and in 1943 led with Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor the Anglo-American surgical mission to Russia. He had been elected an honorary Fellow of the College on 8 April 1943. During the last year of the war he served with the American armies on the Continent, and was twice cited for the United States Distinguished Service Medal for his war service. He proved himself one of the best ambassadors whom America could have sent to England, and endeared himself to all with whom he came in contact. But he overtaxed his strength and, although he threw himself again with his accustomed zest into the full stream of his busy life at home, he was already stricken with illness and died at Boston on 16 August 1947, aged 59. Cutler married on 24 May 1919 Caroline Pollard Parker, who survived him with four sons; their only daughter had died before him. He practised at 721 Huntington Avenue, Boston, and lived at 61 Heath Street, Brookline. He was a tall man with striking aquiline features, a modern representative of the distinguished "colonial" American type, with a most genial and attractive manner. Besides his original contributions to thoracic surgery, Cutler was notable for the tradition of the finest surgical technique which he established among a whole generation of pupils. Publications:- The surgical treatment of mitral stenosis, experimental and clinical studies, with S A Levine and C S Beck. *Arch Surg*. 1924, 9 ,689-821. The surgical aspect of mitral stenosis. *Arch Surg* 1926, 12, 212. Sympathectomy in angina pectoris, with J Fine. *J Amer Med Ass* 1926, 86, 1972. Summary of experiences up to date in the surgical treatment of angina pectoris. *Amer J Med Sci* 1927, 173, 613. The technique of cardiorrhaphy, with C S Beck.*Surg Gynec Obstet* 1927, 45, 74. The surgery of the heart and pericardium, with C S Beck. *Nelson loose-leaf living surgery* 1927, 4, 233. The present status of the treatment of angina pectoris by cervical sympathectomy.* Ann Clin Med* 1927, 5, 1004. The present status of the surgical procedures in chronic valvular disease of the heart, final report of all surgical cases, with C S Beck. *Arch Surg* 1929, 18, 403. The present status of cardiac surgery. *Surg Gynec Obstet* 1932, 54, 274. Total thyroidectomy for angina pectoris, with M T Schnitker. *Ann Surg* 1934 100, 578. Surgical methods for relief of pain in angina pectoris. French version, *Presse méd*, Paris, 1934, 42, 937. *Atlas of surgical operations*, with Robert Zollinger, illustrated by Mildred B Codding. New York: Macmillan, 1939; 2nd edition, 1949. The near-shore: plans for the reception, care and disposition of casualties. *Inter- Allied Conferences on war medicine* (October 1944), 1947, pp. 424-426. Surgery, the US forces. Ibid. (July 1945), 1947, pp. 498-502. The education of the surgeon.*New Engl J Med* 1947, 237, 466 (address on receiving Bigelow medal, with introductory remarks by Dr Joe V.Meigs).
Resource Identifier RCS: E004133
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Ross, Sir James Keith (1927 - 2003)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2005-10-19 2007-09-13
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000100-E000199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372307372307
Occupation Cardiac surgeon
Details James Keith Ross was a leading cardiac surgeon, and one of the team that performed the first cardiac transplant in Britain. He was born in London on 9 May 1927. His father, Sir James Paterson Ross, was later to become professor of surgery at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Surgeon to the Royal Household and President of the College. His mother, Marjorie Burton Townsend, had been a surgical ward sister at Bart’s. Keith was profoundly influenced by his maternal grandfather, Frederick William Townsend, who taught him to work in wood, a practical education in hand-eye coordination, which laid the foundation of his exceptional surgical skill. Another influence was his godfather, Sir Thomas Dunhill, who, whilst recuperating from a hernia repair, gave Keith a trout rod and insisted on demonstrating it whilst in his pyjamas in the middle of Harley Street. Keith attended the Hall School, Hampstead, and then St Paul’s, where he was the senior scholar. He went on to Middlesex Hospital medical school, where he won the Asher scholarship in anatomy and the Lyell medal in surgery. Qualifying in 1950, he became house surgeon to Thomas Holmes Sellors, won the Hallet prize in the primary FRCS and then did his National Service in the Royal Naval Reserve, mostly at sea. On returning to the Middlesex, he passed the FRCS in 1956 and began a training in cardiothoracic surgery at the Brompton Hospital and as a Fulbright scholar with Frank Gerbode in San Francisco, where his research into the fate of grafts in the heart led to a thesis for his masters in surgery and a Hunterian professorship. He was promoted to senior registrar in 1961 at the Middlesex and Harefield hospitals, and to part-time consultant at Harefield in 1964, and later at the Central Middlesex and Middlesex hospitals. In 1967, he gave up these posts, which involved a good deal of stressful travelling, to join Donald Ross at the National Heart Hospital. He was by now at the top of the tree, recognised both in Britain and abroad. His personal series of 100 consecutive homograft aortic valve replacements with only two hospital deaths was, at the time, unrivalled. It was with surprise that his contemporaries learned that he had moved to Southampton, though those who knew him better understood that he felt he was needed there, and it was his duty to go. Arriving in Southampton in 1972, he was joined the following year by James Monro, who had just returned from a year with Barrett-Boyes in New Zealand, and brought expertise in paediatric cardiac surgery. Together they built up a first rate team, accepting only the highest standards and insisting on a strict audit, both of the short-term results and of quality of life after cardiac surgery. The reputation of the department attracted young surgeons from abroad, in particular from Boston, to work in his unit and to support this he organised a cardiac surgical fellowship. Once the unit was well established, he started a second open heart programme at King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst. He was postgraduate dean and then President of the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons. He was elected to the Council of the College in 1986. He was awarded a fellowship in 1989 and the Bruce medal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He succeeded his father to the baronetcy in 1980. Keith was a man of great personal charm, with a high sense of duty, fortified by a solid faith. He was perhaps at his happiest whilst fishing, be it on a Highland salmon river or on the Test. He was also a keen sailor and woodworker, and a talented artist – painting took up much of his time once he had retired. Twice he had pictures accepted for the Royal Academy summer exhibition and, to his glee, sold them both. In 1956, he married Jacqueline Annella Clarke, a Middlesex Hospital nurse. They had four children – a son, Andrew Charles Paterson, an officer in the Royal Marines who succeeds him as third baronet, and three daughters (Susan Wendy, Janet Mary and Anne Townsend). There are eight grandchildren. In 2000, he underwent an operation by his old team to replace his aortic valve. Ironically, it was a procedure he had pioneered. He made an excellent recovery, but nearly a year later developed a dissecting aneursym of the aortic arch: this too was treated with initial success, but he died suddenly on 18 February 2003 in his old hospital.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000120
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Windsor, Henry Matthew John (1914 - 1987)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-08-14
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007700-E007799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379940379940
Occupation Cardiac surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Henry Matthew John Windsor, known as ‘Harry’, the eldest of five children of Dr Henry Joseph Windsor, a medical practitioner, and of Norah Agnes Matthew Windsor née Carroll, was born on 27 October 1914 in Cork, Ireland. His father had left for Australia before his birth and arrived there on 6 August 1914, two days after the outbreak of the first world war. In 1916 Harry and his mother joined Dr Windsor at Toowoomba, Queensland, where he had established a busy general practice before moving to Brisbane. Harry was educated at the Christian Brothers' College and at Nudgee College, Brisbane, before completing first year science at the University of Queensland. He then entered second year medicine at Sydney University in 1934 and graduated with honours in 1938. During student days he played first XV rugby for both Queensland and Sydney Universities. Following resident appointments at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, he served in a field ambulance, a casualty clearing station and hospitals with the Australian Imperial Forces from 1941 to 1946, latterly as a surgical specialist with the rank of Major. He had the distinction of securing the Sydney mastership of surgery during this period. His brother, Gerard Patrick Windsor, was killed in May 1942 while serving as a pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force. On demobilisation in 1946 he secured the Gordon Craig Training Fellowship at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney. In the following year he took the FRACS and then moved to England to secure the FRCS before deciding to take up thoracic surgery. He trained at Harefield Hospital, Middlesex, and at the thoracic surgical unit in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Returning to Sydney in 1949 as surgeon to St Vincent's Hospital he began to establish thoracic surgery there and soon embarked on cardiac surgery. He started closed mitral valvotomy in 1951; open heart surgery with hypothermia in 1954 and soon, in 1960, did his first heart operation on cardiopulmonary by-pass. A first valve replacement was done in 1963 and the first Australian heart transplant on 23 October 1968, followed by coronary artery bypass surgery in the following year so that some 7000 of these operations were performed on his unit by 1986. Although officially retired from St Vincent's in 1979, and from Concord Hospital in 1984, he continued in active surgery as an assistant to two of his younger colleagues until 1985. It should be remembered that there was no systematic training in cardiac surgery during his early days. A hallmark of those and later years was the respect and cooperation which he inspired from his physician colleagues. But progress was slow due to limited facilities until he managed to persuade Sir Russell Brock to visit St Vincent's in 1957. Thereafter development continued apace. Harry Windsor was a keen overseas traveller to the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. He also made seven visits to China, six of these being working trips when he lectured and operated in many parts of that country. He had a good working knowledge of Mandarin Chinese and keenly promoted the training of Chinese as well as Indian surgeons in Sydney. He did much to promote interchange between Australian and Chinese surgeons and had also been a visiting lecturer in Japan. His energy and enterprise were marked by the award of the honorary FACS in 1963 and of the honorary MD, New South Wales, in 1984. His early publications were of a general and pulmonary flavour but he later wrote innumerable papers on all aspects of cardiac surgery, and especially on valve replacement and coronary artery surgery. In 1975 he established the Harry Windsor Prize which makes a modest contribution towards the sending of a young Australian surgeon to the UK, or of a Briton to Australia, in alternate years. Harry was a tireless and dedicated worker with a great memory for people, places and events. He had a keen wit and a quite mischievous sense of humour. In his youth, as a vigorous rugby player, he had once represented New South Wales. The last five years of his life were marked by several major operations during which time he displayed great qualities of courage and tenacity. He had married Imelda Mary ‘Mollie’ Burfitt in 1942 and they had one daughter, Penelope, and five sons, Gerard, John, Michael, Guy (a doctor) and Hugh. When he died in St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney on 20 March 1987 he was survived by his wife and their six children.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007757
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Barratt-Boyes, Sir Brian Gerald (1924 - 2006)

2024-05-03T04:56:31Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-15 2018-03-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008000-E008099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380271380271
Occupation Cardiac surgeon Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Sir Brian Barratt-Boyes was one of New Zealand's foremost cardiac surgeons. He was born on 13 January 1924, the son of Gerald Cave Boyes and Edna Myrtle, née Barratt. After qualifying, he was a lecturer in anatomy at Otago, and then house surgeon and registrar at Wellington Hospital. He was subsequently surgical registrar and pathology registrar at Palmerston North Hospital, before going to the Mayo Clinic as a fellow in cardio-thoracic surgery for two years. He was then awarded a Nuffield fellowship at Bristol in 1956. He returned to New Zealand as senior cardio-thoracic surgeon at Green Lane Hospital. In 1982 he was awarded the Sims Commonwealth travelling fellowship and many honours came to him in the succeeding years: the RT Hall prize for distinguished cardiac surgery in 1966, the René Leriche prize of the Société Internationale de Chirurgie in 1987, and the award for excellence from the Australasian College in 1994, and he was depicted on a postage stamp of the famous New Zealanders series. He published *Heart disease in infancy: diagnosis and surgical treatment* in 1973 and the standard text *Cardiac Surgery* in 1986, which ran into several editions. His recreations included trout fishing and tennis. He was married twice: first to Norma Margaret Thompson, by whom he had five sons. This marriage was dissolved and he married Sara Rose Monester in 1986. See below for an additional extended obituary: Brian Barratt-Boyes was one of the most outstanding cardiac surgeons among the pioneers of open-heart surgery, gaining an international reputation from a relatively remote hospital location. He was born on 13 January 1924 in Wellington, New Zealand, the son of Gerald Cave Boyes and Edna Myrtle née Barratt. He was educated at Wellington College and Victoria University, before going on to study at Otago University's Medical School. After serving as a lecturer in anatomy he became a house surgeon and then a registrar at the Wellington Hospital, from 1948 to 1950. He was then a registrar at Palmerston North Hospital, before becoming a fellow in cardiothoracic surgery at the Mayo Clinic under John Kirklin, who became a close friend. He then went to Bristol on a Nuffield travelling scholarship. In 1957 Sir Douglas Robb recruited him to return to New Zealand to set up open-heart surgery, and he became senior cardiothoracic surgeon at the Green Lane Hospital, Auckland. His first open heart operation was performed in 1958. He introduced a number of new methods, including the use of pacemakers, constructed on the spot by Sid Yarrow, an engineer on the team, at first used externally and implanted for the first time in 1961. Simultaneously, with Donald Ross in London, he introduced the use of aortic valve homografts in 1962, greatly simplifying and improving the surgical technique. In 1969 he brought into the limelight the technique of profound hypothermia with cardiac arrest for paediatric cardiac surgery, so making Green Lane Hospital an international centre for neonates with congenital heart disease. Young cardiac surgeons from all over the world came to work with him, taking back with them his system and techniques, which soon became recognised as the gold standard in this field. His *Heart disease in infancy: diagnosis and surgical treatment* (1973) became the standard text, as did the monumental *Cardiac surgery* (1985), which he wrote in collaboration with John Kirklin. He was the recipient of innumerable honours. In 1971 he was made the first honorary professor in the University of Auckland, and his work was recognised by a knighthood. In 1983 he won a Sims Commonwealth travelling fellowship and gained the René Leriche prize of the Société Internationale de Chirurghie in 1987. He turned down many lucrative offers to work overseas, pointing out that to work in a small, distant hospital (as with the Mayo Clinic) protected one from outside distractions. In all his work, Barratt-Boyes demonstrated what his admirer Christiaan Barnard called, writing in the introduction of Donna Chisholm's biography, 'single-mindedness - a clear sighted striving towards a goal and a vision'. It was ironic that he should himself suffer from serious heart disease, and underwent four operations before finally going to the Cleveland Clinic to have two valves replaced, an operation which was followed by complications from which he died on 8 March 2006. He married twice. In 1949 he married Norma Margaret Thompson, by whom he had five sons. This marriage was dissolved in 1986, and he married secondly Sara Rose Monester.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008088
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset