Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Cardiac surgeon - General surgeon

First Title value, for Searching Shumacker, Harris B (1908 - 2009)

2024-05-24T20:03:21Z

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
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching De Vernejoul, Robert (1890 - 1992)

2024-05-24T20:03:21Z

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
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Baliga, Anappa Vithal (1905 - 1964)

2024-05-24T20:03:21Z

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
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Mills, Frank Harland (1910 - 2008)

2024-05-24T20:03:21Z

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

2024-05-24T20:03:21Z

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

2024-05-24T20:03:21Z

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
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