Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Cardiothoracic surgeon

First Title value, for Searching Chandrasekharan, Aluvangal Pulparambil (1956 - 2011)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2011-10-06 2013-11-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001400-E001499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373639373639
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Aluvangal Pulparambil Chandrasekharan was a cardiothoracic surgeon in the department of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, Pushpagiri Medical College, Kerala, India. He died on 20 June 2011, aged just 54, after sustaining a head injury in a traffic accident three days earlier. He was survived by his wife, Jyothi Chandrasekharan.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001456
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Sapsford, Ralph Neville ( - 2014)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2018-06-19 2021-06-16
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009400-E009499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381873381873
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Ralph Neville Sapsford qualified in medicine in Cape Town in 1962 and eventually travelled to the UK, where he passed the fellowship of the college and of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1967. After working as a senior registrar in cardiothoracic surgery at the Hammersmith Hospital, he became consultant cardiothoracic surgeon and senior lecturer at the Hammersmith, the Royal Postgraduate Medical School and St Mary’s Hospital and Medical School. He lived in Ealing with his wife June and died on 14 February 2014.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009469
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Rasaretnam, Rudra (1931 - 2017)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2017-11-24 2020-07-15
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/381575381575
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Rudra Rasaretnam was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Colombo General Hospital, Sri Lanka. His grandfather was Samuel Chellar Paul, a senior surgeon at Colombo General Hospital and his uncle, Milroy Paul, was the foundation professor of surgery at Colombo Medical College. Rasaretnam studied medicine in London and gained his MB BS and MRCS LRCP in 1957. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1962. He returned to what was then Ceylon in the early 1960s, where he worked with his uncle, Milroy Paul at Colombo General Hospital. He retired in 1997. Rudra Rasaretnam died on 7 August 2017.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009392
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching MacGowan, Simon William (1958 - 2023)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2023-09-19
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010300-E010399
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Simon William MacGowan was a consultant cardiac surgeon at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010347
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Grigg, Graeme Lindsay (1927 - 2017)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by John Tharion
Publication Date 2018-02-22
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009400-E009499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381816381816
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Lindsay Grigg undertook his training in Melbourne, and then went to London where he undertook training in cardiothoracic surgery before returning to Australia. He also worked for a few years in Uganda where he did thoracic surgery and wrote about management of pyopericardium. He worked for a year in Hong Kong and upon return to Australia worked as a thoracic and vascular surgery in Canberra until his retirement in 1991. He continued to be active in surgery and was assessing surgeons until a year before his death.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009412
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Rees, Alun (1940 - 2016)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2016-05-16 2019-09-30
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009100-E009199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381339381339
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Alun Rees was a cardiothoracic surgeon based in Newtownards, Northern Ireland. He was born on 14 June 1940 and gained his FRCS in 1970. He died on 12 April 2016 aged 75.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009156
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Heery, Peter John ( - 2012)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2020-10-27
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009800-E009899
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Peter Heery was a cardiothoracic surgeon in New South Wales. 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: E009848
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Datta, Subir (1963 - 2021)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2021-10-20
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010000-E010099
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Subir Datta was a cardiothoracic surgeon at Manchester Royal Infirmary. 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: E010023
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Percival, Hubert George (1938 - 2011)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2011-11-18 2014-11-25
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001600-E001699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373809373809
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Hubert Percival was a cardiothoracic surgeon. He was born on 13 May 1938 and studied medicine at Birmingham University. An early post was as registrar at Northwick Park Hospital and Clinical Research Centre, Harrow and he also lectured in physiology at the Sherrington School of Physiology, St Thomas's Hospital. Moving to Leicester he became cardiothoracic surgeon to Groby Road Hospital. He published papers on gastric acid secretion, the measurement of peripheral blood flow and antibiotic prophylaxis in cardiac surgery. He is thought to have died in 2011.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001626
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Bhattacharya, Kausik (1966 - 2010)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2013-09-30 2014-06-30
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/376630376630
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Kausik Bhattacharya was a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. He trained at St George's Hospital and qualified MB BS from London University in 1990. Early appointments were at Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor and the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford (1995-97). He passed the fellowship in 1995, was appointed registrar in thoracic surgery to the Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham in 1997 and moved the following year to a cardiothoracic surgery registrar post at Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry. He joined the West of Scotland rotation in a similar role in 1999 and became honorary clinical tutor in cardiac surgery to the University of Glasgow. Moving to Boston, USA in 2002, he spent two years as Naysmith scholar at the Molecular Cardiology Research Unit before returning to Scotland. He listed his professional interests as "cerebral injury following cardiac surgery"; "inflammatory response during and after cardiopulmonary bypass" and "myocardial signalling. Other interests were golf and cricket. He died on 8 July 2010
Resource Identifier RCS: E004447
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Mercer, John Laurence (1932 - 2013)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2013-09-30 2015-09-01
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/376624376624
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details John Laurence Mercer was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Broad Green and Fazakerley hospitals, Liverpool. He was born in 1932, the elder son of Major Laurence Walter Mercer, studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School and qualified MB BS in 1958. He won the Hallett prize in 1960 and became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1963. Prior to his consultant appointment, he was a senior registrar at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, a senior house officer at the Brompton Hospital, London, and a surgical assistant at St Thomas' Hospital. Outside medicine he was interested in silversmithing, pottery and conceptual physics. John Laurence Mercer died on 25 July 2013.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004441
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Lo, Wan Shun (1928- 2020)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2020-03-19
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009700-E009799
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Wan Lo was a senior cardiothoracic surgeon at the Kowloon Hospital, Hong Kong. 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: E009718
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First Title value, for Searching Nwafo, David Chukuagugua ( - 1976)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

First Title value, for Searching Taylor, Desmond Gerard (1925 - 2014)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2014-06-13 2016-09-23
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005400-E005499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377647377647
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Desmond Gerard Taylor was a cardiothoracic surgeon in Sheffield. He was born in Belfast on 12 December 1925 and was educated at a Christian Brothers' School. He then studied medicine at Queen's University, Belfast. After qualifying in 1948, he went to London, where he worked in Great Ormond Street, Guy's and Brompton hospitals. He then worked for Sir Russell Brock helping him perform, for the first time in the UK, successful open heart surgery using a heart bypass machine. After his National Service, he was appointed as a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon in Sheffield in 1960. He chaired Sheffield's consultants' committee and then the south Yorkshire consultants' committee. In retirement he travelled widely. Predeceased by his wife Colette, Desmond Gerard Taylor died on 30 March 2014, aged 88. He was survived by his three children, but one, John, a consultant in transplant surgery at Guy's, died three months after him. He had seven grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005464
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Husfeldt, Erik (1901 - 1985)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008600-E008699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380875380875
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Erik Husfeldt was the first Danish cardiothoracic surgeon. He became Professor of Surgery at the University of Copenhagen and was the inspiration behind the founding of the first intensive care unit in the world in Copenhagen in 1953. During the second world war he had been active in the Danish underground movement to save Jewish citizens from persecution. He was awarded the honorary FRCS in 1967 and died sometime in 1985.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008692
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Bennett, Jeffrey Graeme ( - 2000)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-09 2015-10-16
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/380197380197
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Jeffrey Graeme Bennett was a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Royal Brompton National Heart and Lung Hospital. He trained originally in Brisbane, Queensland before passing the Edinburgh Fellowship in 1971. He passed the FRCS in 1972 and held posts at the London Chest Hospital as well as at the Brompton. He then moved to Bangkok. He died suddenly in Sydney on 28 January 2000, survived by his family.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008014
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Drain, Andrew John (1974 - 2010)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2011-12-20 2014-02-25
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001700-E001799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373963373963
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Andrew Drain was a cardiothoracic surgeon who was born in Northern Ireland on 9 June 1974. In 2006 he worked in the department of cardiothoracic surgery at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge. He was working at a prestigious New York hospital and about to return to the UK as a consultant when he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, aged 33 in September 2007. He was given chemotherapy and returned to Ireland - to Broughshane, near Ballymena - to have a bone marrow transplant. Initially he was thought to have been cured and preached a series of sermons on the book of Job. When he relapsed in June 2009 he wrote a book *Code red* about his sufferings and how his Christian faith had helped him to accept his fate, an obituarist commented "he found through Job that he could face death with confidence because 'I know that my Redeemer lives'". He died on 3 July 2010 survived by his wife, Ruth and children Josh, Conor and Olivia. Publications:- Pride or prejudice: an insight into surgical mentality. *Ulster med j* 2006 75 (3) p 174 *Code red *Christian Medical Fellowship, 2010.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001780
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Hurt, Raymond Walter Lambert (1922 - 2020)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2021-01-07
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009900-E009999
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Raymond Hurt was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the North Middlesex, University College, Middlesex and St Bartholomew’s hospitals in London. 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: E009904
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Brewin, Ernest Garside (1920 - 2010)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2012-02-02 2014-01-24
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001900-E001999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374134374134
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Ernest Garside Brewin was a consultant thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon in Stoke-on-Trent and Stafford. He was born in Batley, Yorkshire, on 22 February 1930, the son of Willie Beaumont Brewin, a warehouse manager. His mother's maiden name was Garside. He was educated at Carlinghow Elementary School and then Batley Grammar School. He went on to study medicine in Leeds. He was a house surgeon at the General Infirmary in Leeds, and then a demonstrator in physiology at the University of Leeds. He subsequently became a research fellow in cardiovascular surgery at Guy's Hospital, a lecturer in surgery at the University of Glasgow, and assistant director on the surgical unit and a surgeon at St Thomas' Hospital, London. He was then appointed to his consultant post at Stoke-on-Trent and Stafford. He listed E R Flint in Leeds, P R Allison, Sir Charles Illingworth and Lord Brock as the surgeons who had most influenced him. He was interested in music and the history of mathematics and science. In 1950 he married Rhoda Eleanor Taylor. They had one daughter. Ernest Garside Brewin died on 26 September 2010, aged 80.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001951
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Ahuja, Anand Mohan (1923 - 2015)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2018-11-20
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009500-E009599
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon General surgeon
Details Lieutenant General Anand Mohan Ahuja was a pioneering cardiothoracic surgeon in the Indian Armed Forces Medical Services. He was born at Lyallpur in the Punjab region of India on 1 November 1923, the second of five brothers. His father was Jivan Das Ahuja, a physician, who encouraged all his sons to become doctors. Ahuja studied medicine at Lahore Medical College and qualified in 1946. He subsequently travelled to the UK for surgical training and gained his FRCS in 1957. He also trained in cardiac surgery in Yugoslavia and went to Washington DC for training in open-heart surgery. He became a professor of surgery at the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune. In addition to his work in lung and open-heart surgery, he also introduced protocols for use in intensive care units and operating theatres across the Armed Forces. He was awarded the Ati Vishisht Seva medal by the president of India. He retired with the rank of lieutenant general and chief consultant. After his retirement he worked as a consultant general surgeon in the police hospital in Oman. In his final years he attended a charitable clinic and played golf. Ahuja died on 19 February 2015 in Bengaluru. He was 91.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009540
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Logan, Andrew (1906 - 2005)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2014-12-24 2017-04-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006600-E006699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378789378789
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon General surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Andrew Logan was a pioneer of cardiothoracic surgery in Edinburgh. He was born in Dairsie, Fife on 6 November 1906. His family were farmers. He left school at 16 and went to St Andrews University, gaining an MA in 1926. He then turned to medicine, qualifying in 1929. He went on to train in Newcastle with George Mason, one of the pioneers of thoracic surgery and the pair carried out the first pneumonectomy in Britain. During the Second World War Logan was a military surgeon in Egypt. In 1948 he was invited to establish a thoracic surgical unit in Edinburgh and, with his colleagues, David Wade, Bobby McCormack and Philip Walbaum, provided an outstanding service for patients from south-east Scotland and further afield. At first they focused on surgery for tuberculosis and cancer of the lung and gullet, but later Logan gained an international reputation for developing an operation (transventricular mitral valvotomy) to correct the damage inflicted on the mitral heart valve during rheumatic fever. Following the introduction of the heart bypass machine, Logan also began to carry out open heart surgery. He carried out the world's second lung transplant. On his retirement in 1972, he left Edinburgh and joined Ben Le Roux in Durban, South Africa, where he taught for more than a decade. He was president of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery and the Scottish Thoracic Society. He was an honorary fellow of the American Thoracic Society. In 1974 he was awarded an honorary DSc by St Andrews. Outside medicine, he was interested in literature and language, the arts and the Scottish countryside. During the Second World War, he met and married Jo Littlewood. She predeceased him in 1980. He died on 9 September 2005, aged 98, and was survived by his two daughters, his son (who is also a surgeon), his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006606
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Huysmans, Hans A (1933 - 2021)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2022-01-18
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010000-E010099
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Hans Huysmans was born into a family of doctors on 8 August 1933 in Oudenbosch, the Netherlands. He studied medicine at the State University of Utrecht from 1950 to 1957. In 1954, when he was still a medical student, he was involved in rescue work during the dreadful floods in the Netherlands and was awarded a civilian decoration for his brave efforts. After a year of military service in 1958, he proceeded to study general surgery and from 1961 to 1964 was on the staff of the St. Antonious Hospital (SAH) in Utrecht. In 1965 he did a brief locum job at St Joseph Hospital in Venlo and then returned to the SAH where he was ‘chef de clinique’ and then staff surgeon until 1979, increasingly specialising in cardiothoracic surgery. From 1973 to 1978, he was professor of cardiothoracic surgery and head of department at the State University in Utrecht and was then appointed to the same status at the State University in Leiden. In 1981 he became consultant cardiac surgeon at the Leyenburg Hospital in the Hague and in 1990 consultant thoracic surgeon at the St Elizabeth Hospital in Leiderdorp. Widely associated with numerous Dutch and European cardiothoracic surgery societies, he was a founder member and vice-president of the European Association for Cardiothoracic Surgery (EACTS). A member of the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, he was awarded the honorary fellowship of the college in 1993. He died on 25 August 2021 aged 88 and was survived by his wife Anne Marie née Pyckevet and their four children.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010050
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Jewsbury, Percy (1920 - 2008)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Raymond Hurt
Publication Date 2010-10-13
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001000-E001099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373215373215
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Percy Jewsbury was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the Blackpool Victoria Hospital. He was born in 12 March 1920 in Manchester, the son of Sydney Shardlow Jewsbury, a heating and ventilation engineer, and Hannah Harrison Alder, a district nurse. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and then entered Manchester Medical School, where he won a Rockefeller studentship to Minneapolis, Minnesota. There he qualified MD in 1943, and returned to Manchester to complete his English qualifications, winning the surgical prize in his finals. He was then a house surgeon at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, at the Birmingham Accident Hospital, and then a casualty officer and resident surgical officer at Manchester Royal Infirmary. From 1946 to 1948, he was in the RAMC as a graded surgeon at 77 British Military Hospital Wuppertal, Rhine Army, whilst retaining his position as a supernumerary surgical registrar on Michael Boyd’s unit at Manchester Royal Infirmary and as a general surgical registrar at the Withington Hospital. In Minneapolis he had been taught by Richard L Varco, who stimulated his interest in thoracic surgery and in 1951 he became a senior registrar in thoracic surgery at the Withington Hospital under Graham Bryce and Frank Nicholson, from which he was appointed as a consultant in cardiothoracic surgery at the Victoria Hospital, Blackpool, in 1955, where he remained until his retirement in 1983. His consultant career was at a time when heart surgery was expanding dramatically and, in 1960, together with James Glenie, he initiated open-heart surgery in Blackpool for the closure of congenital septal defects and valve replacement operations. The heart pump for this new technique of surgery was not readily available in those days and Percy persuaded engineers at the nearly British Aircraft Company in Warton to manufacture a pump – this was the situation in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. All this was in addition to his thoracic work, which included pioneering operations for the resection of post-intubation tracheal strictures and the reanastomosis of the left main bronchus during lobectomy. He also undertook oesophageal resection with colon transplant, and operations for the correction of portal hypertension by spleno-renal and portocaval anastomosis. Like so many of his generation of cardiothoracic surgeons, he was completely dedicated to his work and the further development of open-heart surgery, to the partial exclusion of his home and social life. He was president of the Manchester Surgical Society in 1980, and president of the North West Thoracic Society. In 1945 Percy married Moira Elizabeth Walter, a staff nurse at Manchester Royal Infirmary. They had three sons (David Richard, Brian Ross and Robert Graham), none of whom entered medicine, although one grandson (Hugh Oliver) became an ophthalmologist. In 1969, Percy and Moira retired. His recreations were fell-walking, dingy sailing, golf, music, photography and working in his garage. He died on 17 December 2008.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001032
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First Title value, for Searching Parish, Christopher (1917 - 2014)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Rod Parkinson
Publication Date 2014-06-13 2015-08-07
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005400-E005499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377652377652
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Christopher Parish was the first cardiothoracic surgeon at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge. He was born in Withington, Manchester, the second of four children, and the only son, of Rachel and Reuben Parish. He attended Manchester Central High School and then the University of Manchester, where he gained a BSc before his completing medical studies, qualifying in 1940. In 1941 he joined the RAMC as a medical specialist, marrying Joan Dorothy Bell immediately before starting his duties overseas. He served in the 8th Army in the north African desert and then moved on to the landings at Salerno and Anzio in Italy. After the war, he held a number of positions at Manchester Royal Infirmary, gaining his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1948. In 1950 he was appointed as a consultant thoracic surgeon in Manchester. In 1952 he moved to Cambridge when he was appointed, initially as a thoracic surgeon, to the United Cambridge Hospitals and East Anglian Regional Hospital Board, the launch pad for his pioneering work at Papworth. He also lectured in thoracic surgery at the University of Cambridge and was appointed postgraduate dean for the University's school of clinical medicine and regional director for postgraduate medical education. In the early 1950s tuberculosis had largely been brought under control: Papworth was seeing fewer cases of TB while the number of cardiac patients on the waiting list was increasing. Parish was instrumental in establishing a specialist cardiothoracic surgery unit at Papworth. He convinced the Regional Health Authority that cardiac surgery required specialist support staff and clinicians, and Ben Milstein was recruited to develop open heart surgery at the hospital. Other cardiothoracic surgeons soon joined the team, eventually leading to the UK's first successful heart transplant and the world's first heart-lung-liver transplant. Papworth is today the UK's largest specialist cardiothoracic hospital. In 1968 Parish was elected as a fellow of Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, initially as director of studies in medicine and later as keeper of the muniments and co-editor of the College *annual*. Outside medicine, Parish was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and president of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society and the Cambridgeshire Records Society. He took a lively interest in the community around his home and wrote up the history of the village of Boxworth. Parish was an active supporter of the Royal British Legion and was president of the Elsworth and district branch, before its merger with the Swavesey branch. During his leisure time, Parish enjoyed fly fishing for salmon and trout. Predeceased by his wife in 2009, Christopher Parish died on his 97th birthday in 2014. They had no children.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005469
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First Title value, for Searching Mearns, Alan James (1940 - 2008)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Tom Treasure
Publication Date 2011-11-03 2015-05-22
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001400-E001499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373678373678
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Alan Mearns was a cardiothoracic surgeon in Bradford. He studied medicine in Liverpool, qualifying MB ChB in 1963, and continued his surgical training in the city, passing his FRCS Edinburgh in 1969 and his FRCS in 1970. After a post as a senior registrar in cardiothoracic surgery at Killingbeck Hospital, Leeds, he was appointed to his consultant post in Bradford in January 1980. Alan was widely read but very down to earth. He got on well with patients and staff alike with an easy going nature on the ward and in the outpatient setting. He was good at oesophageal surgery, bringing the same easy going nature to the theatre as on the wards. He published numerous papers and contributed to major textbooks. A series of studies on pain reduction after thoracotomy was a particularly important contribution. He worked closely with his colleague 'Sabba' Sabanathan and their anaesthetist colleagues, completing an influential randomised controlled trial. As a result, continuous paravertebral intercostal nerve block has become a standard method of postoperative pain relief in thoracic surgery ('A prospective, randomized comparison of preoperative and continuous balanced epidural or paravertebral bupivacaine on post-thoracotomy pain, pulmonary function and stress responses.' *Br J Anaesth*. 1999 Sep;83[3]:387-92). He was a regular attendee and frequent contributor at society meetings, appearing as a tousle-haired, sometimes sandal-wearing and somewhat eccentric figure. His views were forthright but well-founded and delivered with generosity to his colleagues and trainees, and always with good humour. He is spoken of with great affection by his one-time trainees. He created an ambience of good will in his staff, which had a positive influence on patient care. His first wife died young and he married for a second time, to Sally. Alan James Mearns died on 23 May 2008. He was 68. He was survived by Sally and by seven children from his two marriages and six grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001495
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Baird, James Aitken (1922 - 2003)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2012-02-29 2014-03-14
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002000-E002099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374246374246
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details James Baird was a cardiothoracic surgeon in Wellington. He was born on 24 January 1922 in Hastings, New Zealand, the son of Hugh William Charles Baird, a director of a drapery company, and Jeanie Aiton Baird née Aitken. He was educated at Mohora School in Hastings and then Wellington College. He went on to study medicine at Otago University in Dunedin, qualifying in 1945. He was a house surgeon and a surgical registrar at Palmerston North Hospital, where he was introduced to thoracic surgery by David Mitchell. In 1949 Baird went to England, where he worked as a registrar at Essex County Hospital, Colchester. He then gained a registrar appointment at Brompton and Guy's hospitals, under Sir Russell (later Lord) Brock and O S Tubbs. He gained his FRCS in 1949. In November 1952 he returned to New Zealand, as the first full-time cardiothoracic surgeon at Wellington Hospital. He also contributed to the regional thoracic surgery service, holding regular clinics in Palmerston North, Wanganui, Napier and Gisborne. In 1960 he travelled to England and the USA to study new developments in thoracic and cardiac surgery, visiting the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Baird was an examiner in cardiothoracic surgery for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, chairman of the division of surgery of Wellington hospitals from 1974, and an executive member and then chairman of the Wellington Hospital medical staff committee. With colleagues, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Wellington Clinical School. He was the first president of the Thoracic Society of New Zealand. He retired in 1982 and moved to Hawke's Bay. He learnt Maori, and was interested in genealogy, history, photography and gardening. In 1968 he married Peggy Grant. They had three sons and a daughter. James Baird died in Hastings on 10 July 2003, aged 81. He was survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter. One son predeceased him.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002063
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Borman, Joseph Bernard (1929 - 2016)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2020-10-19
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009800-E009899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/383873383873
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Joseph Bernard Borman was born in Krugersdorp, South Africa on 3 July 1929. He was the son of Zalman Borman and his wife Leah née Berman. Both his parents were in business and his sister, Hannah, eventually qualified as a physiotherapist. Educated at Krugersdorp High School, he then proceeded to study medicine at the University of Witwatersrand, qualifying MB, BCh in 1951. In 1953 he was a lecturer in the department of anatomy at Witwatersrand before travelling to the UK the following year to work at the Birmingham Accident Hospital and the Royal Cancer Hospital (RCH) in London. He stayed at the RCH until 1955 and was then appointed resident surgical officer at the Woolwich Memorial Hospital where he worked from 1956 to 1958. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1956. After some time in Israel, he went to the USA as a fellow in cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he stayed from 1963 to 1964. By 1974 he was working in Jerusalem as chief of the cardiothoracic surgery unit at Hadassah University Hospital, as professor of surgery at the Hebrew University Medical School and director of the Cardiac Surgery Research Laboratory. After retirement in 1993, he worked at the Biker Cholim Hospital for ten years. From 1988 onwards he acted as a consultant to the Israeli Ministry of Health. He was a member of the International Society of Cardiothoracic Surgery and served as their president in 1994. Outside medicine he enjoyed reading, music, theatre and travel. A particular enthusiasm was collecting stamps relating to heart disease. He married Ruth Lichter, a teacher and writer, on 24 November 1957. They had three children: Margalit (born 1958) who became an expert in special education for children with learning difficulties, Eyal (born 1960) a restaurant owner and caterer and Alon (born 1961) an economist and manager in a tourism office. He died on 22 June 2016 aged 86.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009806
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Allen, Geoffrey Louis (1927 - 2019)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2020-11-24
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009800-E009899
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Geoffrey (Geoff) Louis Allen was born on 11 April 1927 in Peshawar, Pakistan which, at that time was part of British India. He was the oldest child of Alexander James Grant Allen, a doctor, and his wife Eileen Trixie née Fitzgerald. He attended Lamartiniere School in Lucknow, India where he was in their auxiliary force during the last two years of the second world war and underwent training to resist the Japanese who were occupying Burma. Later he commented that the school had a history of *battle honours* and that a contingent of their pupils defended the Residency during the Indian Mutiny in 1857. He studied medicine at the Christian Medical College Hospital in Vellore, South India as one of the first batch of male students and later continued to attend alumni reunions for many years. On graduating MB, BS from the University of Madras in 1952, he did house jobs in the Vellore Hospital before travelling to the UK. After working as a registrar at the Sheffield Royal Infirmary, he became a senior registrar at the Harefield Hospital in London. While in England he was influenced by the work of Sir Thomas Holmes Sellors. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1964. Travelling to New Zealand he worked as a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Green Lane Hospital in Auckland where he was influenced by the work of the New Zealand cardiothoracic surgeons, Sir Brian Barratt-Boyes and David Cole. He also practiced as a thoracic and vascular surgeon at the Waikato Hospital in Hamilton. Outside medicine he enjoyed skiing and playing golf and tennis. An interest in military history led him to make a study of the decisive battles of the world. Colleagues remembered a convivial and entertaining man who prided himself on perfecting the New Zealand war cry complete with dance. He married Shirley Connors in 1968 and they had two sons and a daughter. He died at home on 14 October 2019. Shirley predeceased him and he was survived by their children David, Janet and Chris, and grandchildren, Kate, Nicole, Logan, Daniel and Charlotte.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009869
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Magee, Patrick Gabriel (1947 - 2011)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2011-11-03 2018-12-6
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001500-E001599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373684373684
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Patrick Magee was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the London Chest Hospital, St Bartholomew's and the London Hospital. He was born on 25 February 1947 and qualified MB BCh BAO from University College, Dublin, in 1971. Two years later, he obtained a first class BSc degree in anatomy and physical anthropology. He trained at the Brompton Hospital, National Heart Hospital and the London Hospital and also spent a year as a fellow at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, USA. He was appointed to his consultant post in 1982 and was an honorary senior lecturer at the University of London, also from 1982. In 2005 he was a David Chan visiting professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He contributed to many national and international journals, and wrote on all aspects of cardiothoracic disease, in particular on coronary artery disease and myocardial protection. He was a council member of the British Heart Foundation, president of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland (2004 to 2006), of the cardiothoracic section of the Royal Society of Medicine and of the section of cardiothoracic surgery in the Union of European Medical Specialists (2004 to 2010). He was also chairman of the Specialist Advisory Committee for Cardiothoracic Surgery, and was greatly involved in training and education. An examiner since 1995, he was a member of the Intercollegiate Exam Board in Cardiothoracic Surgery and was latterly responsible for quality assessment of the examiners during examinations. He was lead examiner for the tri-collegiate examination in cardiothoracic surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, the Academy of Medicine of Singapore and the College of Surgeons of Hong Kong. He gained his FRCS from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1971 and from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1976. In 1996 he was awarded an FRCS (ad eundem) from the English College. He was a council member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England from 2004 to 2006. Patrick Magee died on 30 May 2011, aged 64. He was survived by his widow Patricia and their three sons, Hugh, Cormac and Ronan.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001501
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Makey, Arthur Robertson (1922 - 2018)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by David Toase
Publication Date 2018-05-18 2020-07-22
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009400-E009499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381860381860
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon General surgeon
Details Arthur Robertson Makey was a consultant general and cardiothoracic surgeon at Charing Cross Hospital, London. He was born on 3 June 1922 in Dover, Kent, the son of Arthur Frank Makey, a corn chandler and seedman, and Lily Makey née Findlay, a tailoress. He was educated at Dover Grammar School and then gained Kent County and Kitchener scholarships to study medicine at King’s College, London and Charing Cross Hospital Medical School. He qualified in 1945. After pre-registration house posts, he joined the RAF as a medical officer in Bombay and Karachi. Following his demobilisation, he returned to London and continued his surgical training at the Charing Cross and Brompton hospitals. At the Brompton he worked with Bill Cleland, the pioneer of open-heart surgery. In 1955, he was appointed to the consultant staff of Charing Cross Hospital and subsequently also held posts at Colindale and the RAF Hospital at Midhurst, with the honorary rank of air commodore. He was an enthusiastic teacher. He was an examiner in surgery for the University of London from 1964 to 1976 and a member of the court of examiners at the Royal College of Surgeons from 1974 to 1980 (chairman in 1980). Arthur was a meticulous, modest and cool-headed surgeon. He was unusual in that despite his cardiothoracic work he continued to take on a general surgical commitment, however it was the lung work that he liked the best. After medicine, his main passion was golf, which he approached in his usual meticulous and academic way. He became a member of the Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club, becoming captain in 1995. He was known in the club as ‘the professor’. In 1947, he married Patricia Mary Cummings, a nurse, in Bombay. They had three children – David Arthur (a surgeon in the USA), Margaret Anne and John Andrew – and six grandchildren, three of whom have followed him into medicine. Arthur Makey died from Alzheimer’s disease on 25 January 2018. He was 95.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009456
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Douglas, William Keith (1917 - 2015)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2015-09-15 2018-11-26
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/380259380259
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details William Keith Douglas was a cardiothoracic surgeon at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester. He was born in Manchester on 30 March 1917, the son of William Robert Douglas, a general surgeon who gained the FRCS in 1910, and Margaret Douglas née Kirkbride, a singer. He was educated at Leas School, Hoylake and Uppingham School. He went on to Emmanuel College, Cambridge to study natural sciences and then Manchester University Medical School for his clinical studies. He qualified in 1943 and carried out house surgeon appointments. In July 1943, he joined the RAMC as a lieutenant. He was initially attached to a field dressing station but was transferred to the 62nd Anti Tank Regiment. He was in Normandy two days after D-Day. He later joined the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and while in Germany looked after 10,000 displaced persons located in camps over an area of 70 square miles. In August 1945, he was in Egypt and Palestine. He was demobilised in October 1946 as a major. From 1947 to 1948 he was an assistant resident surgical officer at Manchester Royal Infirmary. From 1948, he held several senior house officer posts at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. In 1952, he was appointed as a resident surgical officer at Manchester Royal Infirmary, becoming a senior surgical registrar a year later and, from 1956 to 1959, a senior thoracic registrar. In 1959, he was appointed as a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon to the Manchester Regional Hospital Board attached to Park Hospital, Davyhulme, Baguley Hospital, Manchester and, from 1974, Wythenshawe Hospital. He retired in March 1982. At Manchester Royal Infirmary he took part in research designed to enable the unit to carry out open heart surgery. While at Wythenshawe he helped establish a cardiac surgical unit. As well as cardiac surgery, he also carried out pulmonary and oesophagreal surgery and had outpatient clinics at various hospitals in the Manchester, Lancashire and Cheshire area. In his early life, he was interested in rugby. Up until his retirement he played golf. After retiring he enjoyed a happy social life and gardening with his wife, Pamela Stewart née Jones, a secretary whom he had married in 1949. They had no children.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008076
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Slade, Philip Ridd Helyar (1916 - 2010)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Raymond Hurt
Publication Date 2011-01-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001100-E001199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373310373310
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Philip Slade was a cardiothoracic surgeon at Groby Road Hospital, Leicester. He was born on 31 May 1916 in Bristol, the son of Alexander Slade, an engineer, and his wife Elsie. He served in the RAMC in the Second World War, after which he trained in general surgery up to senior registrar level and was appointed as a senior lecturer in surgery at the University of Khartoum, Sudan. After two years, he returned to train in thoracic surgery at the North Middlesex, the Brompton and St Bartholomew hospitals, before he was appointed in 1963 as a consultant surgeon to the regional cardiothoracic centre, Groby Road Hospital, Leicester. There he established open heart surgery in association with his consultant colleague Betty Slessor. He was unassuming and typically wrote in 2001 that he 'had never published any material which is of lasting importance', although he wrote two cardiac case reports in the *British Journal of Surgery* in 1954 and a third in *The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery* in 1963. He was an active member of Pete's Club - a travelling surgical club whose only rule was that 'no reported case should reflect credit on himself' - and where only errors of judgement and surgical mishaps were described. His contributions were always presented with dry humour and eagerly awaited by members of the club. In retirement, he worked voluntarily for many years as medical officer to Taunton Hospice. He was unmarried. He died on 17 May 2010, alert mentally, but physically restricted in a retirement home which he said he found 'utterly boring'.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001127
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Paneth, Matthias (1921 - 2011)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Raymond Hurt
Publication Date 2011-10-07 2015-09-01
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001400-E001499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373648373648
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Mathias Paneth was a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Brompton Hospital, London. He was born in Amsterdam in 1921, the son of a doctor who subsequently worked as a surgeon in Sumatra, where he developed a special interest in tuberculosis surgery. Matt was educated at Gordonstoun and Christ Church, Oxford. After National Service and junior medical posts at the Fulham, Royal Marsden and the Brompton hospitals, he was awarded a Fulbright research fellowship in 1957 to work for a year in Minneapolis with Walton Lillehei, a pioneer of open-heart surgery in children, who used a new type of artificial heart-lung machine designed by his own team. As was the custom in the USA, this led to a number of joint surgical articles. Matt returned to the Brompton Hospital as a senior registrar and two years later was appointed to the consultant staff as a full-time surgeon on the retirement of Russell Brock (later Lord Brock). At the Brompton he was always available to operate and give advice to the junior staff. This availability and willingness to give advice continued until his retirement. At the Brompton Hospital he pioneered heart surgery on infants and later heart valve replacement and repair in adults, with the adequacy of the procedure based on a new non-invasive technique of echocardiography, which allowed assessment of the efficacy of the repair at operation, if not adequate the repair could be immediately modified. Later he was associated with the new techniques of coronary artery bypass surgery. Matt was a tall imposing figure with considerable presence. He had a great sense of humour and an enormous fund of anecdotes, which he would tell with a deadpan face. He was prone to make outrageous statements concerning his colleagues and current events, which were disconcerting to his listeners unless they realised that they were not meant to be taken seriously. He was often stern with his trainees and is reported to have frequently asked in the operating theatre 'Who is the most important person in this room?' They would understandably reply 'Why, you sir', to which he would say 'No, of course not, it is the patient'. He was a founder member of 'Pete's Club', the brain-child of Peter Jones when he was senior registrar to Sir Clement Price Thomas and who subsequently became a consultant in Manchester and later at Westminster Hospital, London. The writer was secretary of the club from its foundation in 1960 until the final meeting in 1988. We were all contemporary cardiothoracic surgeons and we met twice yearly to discuss failures and errors of judgement - the only rule of the club was that 'no case that is presented shall throw credit on the presenter'. We learnt a lot from these meetings, much more than at national meetings where only good results would be reported. Matt would teach his juniors to cut tissue, never to wipe (a crude technique often used by inexperienced surgeons) - 'What you have cut, you can sew,' he would say 'but what you have torn apart cannot be put back together again'. He resurrected the operation of emergency pulmonary embolectomy under cardiopulmonary bypass and he organised a mobile surgical team to carry out this procedure in peripheral hospitals. The technique was soon superseded by intravenous high dosage streptokinase therapy to dissolve the clot in the pulmonary artery. Matt was not a prolific writer of surgical articles, but his surgical technique for lung surgery was well described in a book he co-authored entitled *Fundamental techniques in pulmonary and oesophageal surgery* (London, Springer-Verlag, c.1987). Before going to the United States he had married Shirley Stansbie, with whom he had two daughters, one of whom became a lawyer and was appointed a crown court judge in 2011. Matt died on 31 August 2011, only ten days after an investigation for tiredness, which had revealed an inoperable bronchial carcinoma, for which he wisely refused any treatment. He had not smoked since the 1950s.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001465
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Crawshaw, George Reginald (1916 - 1979)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

First Title value, for Searching Bennett, Donald John (1939 - 2008)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by June Bennett
Publication Date 2015-09-14 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/380216380216
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Don Bennett was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Sydney Adventist Hospital. He was born on 14 April 1939 in Brisbane, the eldest son of Sir Arnold Lucas Bennett, a barrister, and his first wife Marjory (née Williams), who died when Don and his three siblings were very young. He was then raised by his stepmother, Nancy (née Mellor), and had four half siblings. His great grandfather, Thomas Pennington Lucas, was a medical practitioner and naturalist who emigrated to Australia in the 1870s. Wesleyan Methodism was a strong family influence for several generations. He was educated at Toowong and Ironsides state schools, and at Brisbane Boys' College. He was tall and athletic, being a good swimmer, runner and cricketer, and a bit of 'larrikin' in the Australian tradition. He drove a Second World War Willys Jeep while a student at the University of Queensland and qualified in 1962. He interned at Toowoomba Base Hospital and met a newly-graduated pharmacist, June Bloomfield, and married in 1963. They sailed to England in 1965, where he was a junior house surgeon at Memorial Hospital, Shooters Hill, and then a senior house surgeon at Cuckfield Hospital. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1968. Returning to Australia, he was a registrar in cardiothoracic surgery at the Prince Henry Hospital, Sydney, before relocating to the Pacific (Presbyterian) Medical Center, San Francisco in 1971 as a fellow in cardiothoracic surgery with Frank Gerbode. Mogens L Bramson was on the staff and they were using prolonged partial bypass for critically ill patients. Early in 1972 the family - there were now two young boys - drove an old Chevrolet across the USA in the middle of winter to the Cleveland Clinic, where Donald Effler, the chief of cardiothoracic surgery, had encouraged René Favaloro to pioneer coronary artery surgery. The chief of cardiology was F Mason Sones Jr, who had pioneered coronary angiography. Don was successively a fellow, chief resident and associate staff surgeon there before returning to the Prince Henry Hospital in 1975 as a staff specialist. In 1978, he became the first consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Sydney Adventist Hospital when they founded a unit there. He retired in 1991. Don was a man without pretension or prejudice and with an acute sense of humour. His working life was consumed by his concern for his patients and his team, and by participating in his boys' school and sporting activities. In retirement golf became a passion, which continued after returning to Queensland in 2002. His final three-year battle with melanoma was conducted with good humour and courage. Don Bennett died on 4 October 2008 aged 69. He was survived by his widow June, sons Ross and Brian, and granddaughters Madison, Ashleigh and Riley.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008033
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Sabanathan, Sabapathipillai Sabaratnam (1949 - 1997)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-12-04
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/381078381078
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Born in Ceylon in 1949, Sabanathan qualified in 1972 and, after junior posts, came to England in 1977 to specialise in surgery. He was appointed consultant cardiothoracic surgeon to the Bradford Royal Infirmary in 1989, where he developed a number of ingenious new techniques, including a method of continuous extrapleural intercostal analgesia, the use of tissue adhesive, techniques for stenting airways, preventing bronchopleural fistulae, a method for elongating the stomach for high oesophageal cancers, a rib punch to prevent pain after thorascopic surgery and single lung transplantation. He was one of the founders of the charity Lungs for Life, which raised thousands of pounds for equipment for his hospital. He wrote extensively and was an Hunterian Professor in 1994 for his work on postoperative pain. He married Thirumani and they had two daughters, one of whom, Anetha, followed him into medicine. He died on 29 April 1997 of a myocardial infarction.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008895
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Katz, Gerson (1922 - 2005)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2006-10-26
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000200-E000299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372455372455
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Gerson Katz was a cardiothoracic surgeon in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was born in Johannesburg and studied medicine at Witwatersrand University. After qualifying he completed junior posts in Durban at King Edward VIII Hospital. He then went to the UK, to specialise in surgery. He was a house surgeon at the National Temperance Hospital in 1947, subsequently doing registrar jobs at the London Chest and Harefield hospitals and then becoming a senior registrar in Southampton. In 1952 he returned to Johannesburg, to join Fatti and Adler in developing the cardiothoracic unit at the Johannesburg General Hospital. He entered private practice in 1956. He was appointed part-time consultant in the faculty in 1962. He worked at Rietfontein, Natalspruit, the old Johannesburg General, and former J G Stydom hospitals, before moving to Johannesburg Hospital. He retired in 2000. During his career he saw the evolution of open heart surgery. He was an outstanding teacher, winning an exceptional service medal from the Faculty of Health Sciences in 2001. He married Beatrice and they had five children. He had a great love for the arts. He died from acute myeloid leukaemia on 17 February 2005.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000268
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Abrams, Leon David (1923 - 2012)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Raymond Hurt
Publication Date 2013-02-20 2013-09-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003500-E003599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375775375775
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Leon Abrams was a cardiothoracic surgeon who developed the first variable-rate heart pacemaker. He was born in Leeds, but his family soon moved to Birmingham, where he spent most of his life, apart from a short period of National Service in the Royal Army Medical Corps. After medical school in Birmingham and surgical training, 'Abe', as he was universally known, was appointed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the city, as a cardiothoracic surgeon. Here he set up one of the foremost centres for lung and heart surgery in the United Kingdom, and established open-heart surgery in the hospital. He also developed his talent for mechanical devices. He designed a pleural biopsy punch in the 1950s, which is still used for the diagnosis of intrathoracic lesions, and, in 1960, together with Ray Lightwood, an electronic engineer, he developed the variable-rate heart pacemaker, which solved two problems of earlier designs - infection from the wires through the skin and muscle pain from the electrical impulses. These were both solved by 'inductive coupling', so that the pacemaker was outside the body and the heart stimulation came from a small implanted coil. The device was marketed as the 'Lucas-Abrams pacemaker', a small box strapped to a belt outside the body. He also developed an artificial heart valve, although this did not prove to be entirely successful, despite being cheap to manufacture. At the Queen Elizabeth Hospital he specialised in treating newborn babies with congenital heart defects, and often stayed in the hospital through the night to supervise their postoperative care, so vital after this type of surgery. Abe's empathy for his patients made him a reassuring presence in the hospital. He was a founder member of 'Pete's Club', the brain-child of Peter Jones, its founder chairman. The only rule of the club was that no case should be presented which threw credit on the presenter; only errors of judgement were discussed. This meant that members learnt a great deal at these meetings, much more than at other national and international surgical events. Abe was elected chairman of the Medical Executive Committee, the teaching hospitals doctors' association in Birmingham, by his colleagues. He also served on numerous boards, and was an adviser to, among other institutions, the Royal Brompton Hospital in London. He had little time for outside interests, but he was for many years on the council of Singers Hill Synagogue in Birmingham, and also, like his father, chairman of the governors of King David School, a Jewish primary school. He also loved dinghy sailing and later cruising with his family across the channel to Normandy and Brittany. In retirement he had the misfortune to develop three types of cancer - non-Hodgkin lymphoma, bladder cancer and then colonic cancer, all three of which were successfully treated. He also developed polymyalgia and was treated with steroids, which led to a great increase in his weight. He had developed some degree of coronary atheroma, for which a stent had been inserted. He died in his sleep on 14 December 2012, at the age of 89. He was survived by Eva, his wife of 60 years, and three sons.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003592
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Wooler, Geoffrey Hubert (1911 - 2010)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Raymond Hurt
Publication Date 2010-06-10
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001000-E001099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373199373199
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Geoffrey Wooler was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Leeds General Infirmary and a pioneer of open heart surgery. He was born in 1911, the son of a successful Leeds businessman. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and Giggleswick School, before going up to Cambridge to read law. After two terms, he switched to medicine and went on to the London Hospital for his clinical studies. After qualifying in 1937, he was house surgeon to Tudor Edwards, who stimulated his interest in thoracic surgery and arranged for him to visit the Charité Hospital in Berlin, where the bold and pioneering surgery of Ernst Ferdinand Sauerbruch attracted visiting assistants from all over the world, even though Sauerbruch, who was both a Nazi and a bully, treated them abominably. Wooler had already joined the Territorial Army and, after passing the FRCS, became a graded surgeon and served in the 70th General Hospital RAMC in North Africa from the Algerian landings to Italy, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was mentioned in despatches after the battle of Casino. After the war, he returned to the London Hospital to become first assistant to Tudor Edwards and Vernon Thompson, meanwhile completing an MD thesis on his surgical experiences in the Middle East. Almost immediately Philip Allison invited him to join him as a consultant thoracic surgery at the General Infirmary in Leeds. When Allison moved to Oxford, Wooler was joined by John Aylwin. In 1957 he set up an open heart unit with one of the first heart lung machines, designed by Denis Melrose at the Hammersmith Hospital. For a time Leeds and the Hammersmith were the only two units doing open heart surgery in the United Kingdom. Later he was joined by Marian Ion Ionescu, a refugee from Romania, and together they developed the use of pig valves to replace damaged mitral valves, a technique which did not require post-operative anticoagulants. This new method established Wooler’s reputation in Leeds. His reputation was further enhanced when Lord Woolton collapsed at the Conservative Party conference in Scarborough. He was thought to have pulmonary oedema from heart failure, even though the sputum was pure pus. Wooler was called in. The X-ray showed an elevated left diaphragm. Wooler diagnosed a subphrenic abscess which had ruptured into the lung. He drained the abscess and Woolton recovered. Wooler and Aylwin both owned Rolls-Royces, the former being chauffeur-driven. Such was the thoracic social scene in the 1950s. Geoffrey retired in 1974, to run a restaurant. This turned out to be a disaster and after a year he sold it to the chef, though he continued to live next door. He was a born bon viveur and raconteur, and recorded his adventures in a delightful and amusing memoir entitled *Pig in a suitcase* (Otley, Smith Settle, 1999), which modestly left out any reference to his considerable achievements in surgery, not least of which were his development of biological tissue heart valves and his experience of 50 cases of drainage of subphrenic abscesses. He died on New Year’s Day 2010, in his 99th year.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001016
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Gibson, David Stuart (1925 - 1995)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2016-10-27 2020-11-12
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009200-E009299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381446381446
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details David Stuart Gibson was a cardiothoracic surgeon in Hobart, Tasmania. Born in Hobart on 23 May 1925, he was the second child and only son of Stuart Galloway Gibson, a medical practitioner, and his wife, Leonora née Whitham who was a pianist and music teacher. His paternal grandfather, George Harry Gibson, was also a medical man having qualified MB ChB at Edinburgh in 1887 and his maternal grandfather, Major Lawrence Yates Whitham, served in the Indian Army. He was educated at The Hutchins School in Hobart from 1933 to 1942 and was dux of the school the year that he left. At the University of Tasmania he was first in the science scholarship in 1942 and also won the Sir Richard Dry exhibition for maths. He also won prizes for geometry and plane trigonometry. His studies were interrupted by the second world war and he served in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) from 1943 until 1946 when he was discharged as a sub-lieutenant. From 1970 he continued to serve in the reserve as a surgeon lieutenant. In 1948 he enrolled as a resident of Ormond College, Melbourne University to study medicine and trained at the Royal Melbourne Hospital with J I Hayward graduating MB BS in 1952. Returning to Hobart he did house jobs at the Royal Hobart Hospital (RHH) for a year working with P Braithwaite before joining the staff of the Repatriation General Hospital Heidelberg, Victoria from 1955 to 1956. On travelling to the UK, he worked at the West Suffolk General Hospital from 1958 to 1959 before moving to the Royal Brompton Hospital in London where he was mentored by Lord Brock and Oswald Sydney Tubbs. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1959 and returned to Tasmania. Appointed consultant cardiothoracic surgeon to the RHH in 1960 he remained on the staff until 1992 becoming head of the unit in 1980. He was also visiting cardiothoracic surgeon to the Repatriation General Hospital in Hobart from for thirty years from 1960. From 1964 to 1972 he served on the Tasmania State Committee of the RACS latterly as chairman. A member of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand and the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, he was also on the board of St John’s Hospital Hobart, from 1964 to 1972, the board of Hutchins School from 1974 to 1980 and president of the Tasmanian Club from 1979 to 1981. At university he had been a skilled oarsman and won a half blue at skiing. Later his favourite pastimes were gardening, fishing and swimming. He married Margaret Jeanne Bryce, a qualified nurse, on 14 May 1955 and they had four children. His son James Stuart became a maths teacher at The Hutchins School; Andrew David was a qualified GP and a lieutenant commander in the RAN; Peter Stuart was a police constable and Sarah Jane became a housewife. He died on 6 November 1995 aged 70 survived by his wife and family and sister, Margaret.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009263
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Bailey, John Stuart (1932 - 2016)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Ian Bailey
Publication Date 2017-03-16 2017-03-23
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/381499381499
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon General surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details John Stuart Bailey (or 'JCB') was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon in Leicester. He was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, and spent his early years in Cairo, before being evacuated in 1940 to Durban and on to England. He was educated at Sherborne School, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and St Mary's Hospital Medical School. After house jobs, he started National Service and converted to a short service commission with the RAMC. He saw active service during the Brunei Revolt as a surgeon in a Far East field surgical team. On his return to the UK from Singapore, he worked as a general surgeon, before joining Charles Drew at St George's Hospital as a thoracic registrar. He subsequently spent 11 years as a registrar and then a senior registrar in thoracic and cardiac surgery at Westminster Hospital. During this time, he spent a year (from 1970 to 1971) at Toronto General Hospital working with W G Bigelow. Finding a consultant post in the mid 1970's was difficult and required resilience, JSB finally escaped London for Leicester in 1977. He enjoyed a happy and successful career until his retirement in 1995. JSB was part of a major transition generation in cardiac surgery. Beyond the early pioneers, he and his generation established safe and routine cardiac surgery. An early medical manager, he strove to understand the true costs of NHS care and pushed for honest, open and comprehensive reporting of outcomes. He was prepared to tackle controversy. On one occasion, he challenged coronary surgery in those who continued to smoke, provoking an aggressive public debate ('Coronary bypass surgery should not be offered to smokers' *BMJ* 1993 306 1047). He believed fervently in the NHS and social model of health care. He did not like the effect 'for profit' health care had on services and some surgeons. His beliefs and principles sometimes put him at loggerheads with parts of the surgical community. He reminded me, as a trainee general surgeon, when I was struggling with confidence after an unpleasant session with a trainer, not to become an egotistical, self-congratulatory surgeon. 'Remember' he said, '…it is the patients who are being brave!' He was president of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland, and president of the Society of Clinical Perfusion Scientists, having helped the perfusionists establish a professional structure. JSB was made an honorary fellow of the Polish College of Surgeons in 1987. In 1992, he received further recognition for his work with Polish cardiac surgeons, with an award from the Bruckner Foundation. He and his wife had many happy visits to Poland and made many friends. Retirement did not create a void. He announced within weeks that he did not understand how he ever had time to go to work! Golf, genealogy, an amazing photographic record of butterfly life cycles, travel, community, friends and a growing extended family filled a healthy and happy retirement which lasted more than 20 years. John Stuart Bailey died suddenly, at home, on 18 September 2016, just short of his 83rd birthday. He was survived by his wife of 58 years, Alison, three children and 10 grandchildren. His ashes will be scattered in Kintyre, Argyll and Bute, his beloved holiday retreat of 44 years.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009316
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Blesovsky, Ary (1927 - 2019)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Michael Blesovsky
Publication Date 2019-12-18 2020-02-19
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009600-E009699
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Ary Blesovsky, commonly known as ‘Bles’, devoted his life to cardiothoracic surgery and was instrumental in bringing this surgery to numerous hospitals around the world. He was born in Pasvalys, Lithuania, the son of Jochiel and Pesi Blesovsky, but the family moved, in 1933, to South Africa. His father was a Hebrew language academic honoured by the Lithuanian government of the day for his contribution to the national education system. In South Africa, his father continued as a teacher and community leader and he and his wife raised and educated their four children who all went on to successful careers. Bles chose medicine as his vocation and graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1950. Due to the politics of the day, he chose to work outside of South Africa and came to the UK later that year. He worked through various roles at Highlands Hospital, Whipps Cross, Birmingham Accident and Pinderfields, before taking up a position as a senior registrar in thoracic surgery at Clare Hall Hospital. During his time at Pinderfields he met Margaret Smith, who was working as a surgical nurse; in her words their ‘eyes met over their masks’ and they married in 1955. At Clare Hall Bles decided to specialise in thoracic surgery, but felt that he should broaden his general surgical experience first, chose to do so in a developing country and took up the position of senior registrar at the University College Hospital in Ibadan, Nigeria. At the time this was the only teaching hospital in Nigeria and the work involved a broad range of advanced pathologies found in under-developed countries and the teaching of undergraduate students. The thoracic work primarily involved dealing with the surgical treatment of TB resistant to standard chemotherapy. During his time in Ibadan Bles was involved in helping Peter Konstam in his work on the ambulant treatment of sufferers of spinal TB. In 1961 Bles returned to the UK to take up the position of senior registrar in thoracic surgery at St Bartholomew’s in London. He held similar posts at Brompton Hospital and the London Chest Hospital over the following four years. These appointments broadened his training to include cardiac surgery, especially at the London Chest, where he worked for two visiting surgeons who each visited on only one day per week, leaving the management of the department and work to him, with only minimal supervision. At both the Brompton and London Chest Bles participated in the postgraduate teaching programme. In October 1965, he was awarded an Evarts A Graham travelling fellowship and a Wellcome Foundation travel grant and spent the year as a research fellow to the department of cardiovascular surgery at the Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center in San Francisco. The work involved both clinical and research elements and gave him the opportunity to visit a number of cardiac centres across the USA, attend meetings of American surgical societies and to take part in a course held at the Mayo Clinic. Towards the end of 1966 he returned to the UK, taking up a post as a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon to the Newcastle Regional Board and United Newcastle Hospitals, initially working at Shotley Bridge Hospital, the larger of the two regional thoracic centres in the North of England. His primary role was to establish an open-heart surgical programme in the region. After reorganising the department, the programme started at the beginning of 1967 and the unit grew to encompass a cardiologist, a second surgeon and a second anaesthetist by the end of 1974. In 1977 Bles moved from Shotley Bridge Hospital to the new Freeman Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne to establish the cardiothoracic unit there. He worked at the Freeman Hospital until his retirement in 1988. During his working life Bles published many articles, including ‘The folded lung’, which identified what is commonly known as ‘Blesovsky syndrome’, in the *British Journal of Diseases of the Chest* in January 1966 (*Br J Dis Chest*. 1966 Jan;60[1]:19-22) and gave many learned papers in the UK and internationally. In 1971, he was invited by the University of Zagreb to advise on the establishment of open-heart surgery at the Rebro Hospital. Following this visit a training programme for registrars from the Rebro Hospital was established at Shotley Bridge Hospital. In 1973, he advised the department of surgery at the medical school in Skopje on starting an open-heart surgery programme. During 1973 and 1974 Bles was a member of an international panel at the 10th and 11th symposia on cardiac problems at the Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, East Germany. In 1977 and 1979 Bles was a visiting professor in the department of cardiothoracic surgery at the Medical College of Trivandrum, India. In retirement Bles and Margaret moved to the Isle of Arran and he continued to pursue his interests in marquetry, music and golf. Over more than 30 years on the island they became well known and highly regarded members of the community but regrettably had to move from the island in early 2019 due to their growing need for care and support, which was unavailable locally. They moved to Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire to be nearer their sons and their families. Bles died peacefully on 5 November 2019 after a short illness at the age of 92 and was survived by his wife, Margaret, and sons, David and Michael
Resource Identifier RCS: E009676
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Austen, William Gerald (1930 - 2022)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Sir Barry Jackson
Publication Date 2022-12-05
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010100-E010199
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details William Gerald Austen, always known as Jerry, was a giant of American cardiothoracic surgery, a past president of the American College of Surgeons, the author of over 500 peer assessed academic publications and a much-loved friend to all who knew him. He was born in Akron, Ohio, to Bertha Marie Arnstein née Jehle and Karl Arnstein, Czech born immigrants to the USA, on 20 January 1920. He was educated at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a BS degree in mechanical engineering. He then transferred to medicine at Harvard from, where he graduated MD in 1955. Postgraduate study included a year (1959 to 1960) as a senior registrar in the United Kingdom at King’s College Hospital, London and the General Infirmary, Leeds, followed by two years at the National Heart Institute, Bethesda, before returning to Boston to become chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)’s surgical cardiovascular research unit in 1963. Then ensued a stellar career in cardiac surgery during which time he was especially noted for the development in the design and creation of a cardiopulmonary bypass machine and the intra-aortic balloon pump. He became a full professor of surgery at Harvard in 1966 and in 1974 assumed the Edward D Churchill chair of surgery. After his retirement from clinical practice, he remained active in key positions at MGH, especially in regard to the philanthropy program, of which he was co-chair. He was honoured by the creation of the W Gerald Austen chair of surgery at the MGH and in 2020 an eight-storey building at the MGH was renamed the W Gerald Austen Building in honour of his leadership and service, such was his esteem at that hospital. Jerry was showered with honours and awards throughout the USA and abroad. He was president of the Association for Academic Surgery (1970), the New England Cardiovascular Society (1972), the Society of University Surgeons (1972), the American Heart Association (1977), the American Surgical Association (1985), the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (1988), and the American College of Surgeons (1992). He was made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1986. Jerry was happily married to Patricia (née Ramsdell) for over 60 years. They had four children, Karl, Jay, Christopher and Elizabeth. He died on 11 September 2022 aged 92.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010179
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Roberts, Keith Danford (1923 - 2012)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Leon Abrams
Publication Date 2012-07-12 2013-11-25
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002600-E002699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374829374829
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Keith Roberts was a consultant cardiothoracic paediatric surgeon in Birmingham. He was born on 15 February 1923 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, the only child of the Reverend Meredith Danford Roberts, a Congregational minister, and his wife, Caroline Lettie Roberts née Stuart, a teacher born in South Africa. Roberts gained scholarships to King Edward VI Grammar School, Nuneaton, and then to Birmingham University Medical School. In 1942 he gained the Peter Thompson anatomy prize, and in 1946 the senior surgical and midwifery prizes. He held house surgeon appointments at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham. He remained in the city for his surgical training, with posts at St Chad's and Dudley Road hospitals, and the Children's Hospital. In 1953 he was appointed as a thoracic surgical registrar (and, in 1954, as a senior thoracic surgical registrar) for United Birmingham Hospitals and Birmingham Regional Hospital Board. In April 1959 he became a consultant thoracic surgeon to the United Birmingham Hospitals at the Children's Hospital, and to the regional thoracic unit at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. He was appointed as a senior clinical lecturer in surgery at the University of Birmingham in the following year. In 1969 he was made a consultant cardiothoracic paediatric surgeon at the Children's Hospital, the first appointment at the hospital of a purely paediatric surgeon. He and his colleague Leon Abrams established the Birmingham Children's Hospital as the West Midlands centre for paediatric cardiac surgery. After cardiac surgery had developed at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the late 1950s, it became evident that children should be treated at the Children's Hospital. In the early 1960s Keith Roberts initiated the development of a special operating theatre and the first two intensive care beds for children. He had a strong interest in intensive care, and became a founder member of the Intensive Care Society. He continued to campaign for more intensive care beds at the Children's Hospital, but a lack of funds delayed the enlargement of the unit until the mid-1970s. Initially his forte was in neonatal thoracic surgery. He undertook outstanding pioneering surgery on newborn infants with tracheoesophageal fistula. He successfully separated conjoined twins and was frequently consulted by other surgeons. He later gained considerable cardiac surgical expertise, in particular concerning coarctation of the aorta and developments in cardiopulmonary bypass. He was also one of the first to use bypass in the intensive care unit on a relatively long-term basis, for treating acute respiratory difficulty. Using bypass, he also helped colleagues carrying out complicated hepatic surgery. He published many papers and chapters in textbooks, including contributions to Rob and Smith's *Clinical surgery* and *Operative surgery*. He co-wrote *Paediatric intensive care* (Oxford, Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1971) with Jennifer M Edwards. At the Children's Hospital, he was on call on a one-in-two basis and spent many long nights caring for his postoperative patients - and then operating again the following day. He was always prepared to take on extra work and helpfully supported all his colleagues. He was a most compassionate, kind man and this was appreciated by his colleagues, patients and their families. In 1946 he married Margaret Evelyn née Holloway, a nurse. They had three children: Meryl Elizabeth, Diane Marguerite and Christopher Ian Danford. Keith Roberts died on 17 June 2012, aged 89.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002646
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Griffin, Selwyn Gerrard (1913 - 1992)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-09
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007900-E007999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380152380152
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon General surgeon
Details Selwyn Griffin was born at St Helen's, Lancashire, on 3 May 1913. His father, George Harold Barlow Griffin, was a headmaster, and his mother was Ada Ann, née Gerrard. He was educated at St Helen's and Liverpool University, where he was influenced by Sir Robert Kelly and Sir Reginald Watson-Jones. He became lecturer and eventually senior surgeon in charge of the cardiothoracic surgical service at Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1947 he married Joan Dickinson, MB BS, and they had three children. At Shotley Bridge Hospital he helped to form the regional thoracic centre and later a cardiothoracic surgical unit at Seaham Hall, developing cardiac surgery for the Northern region. Griffin was an excellent and neat surgeon and a good teacher and lecturer. He was interested in oesophageal surgery, particularly in children. He enjoyed golf, rugger and tennis, badminton and yachting, ornithology, gardening and wildlife. He died on 7 March 1992, survived by his wife, a son (a consultant surgeon), two daughters and six grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007969
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Saunders, Nigel Richard (1946 - 1998)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

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/381090381090
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Nigel Richard Saunders was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon in Leeds. He was born in Brighton on 22 January 1946, the son of Donald Allan Garner Saunders, a bank manager, and Joan Cathleen Mary Snelling. He was educated at Reigate Grammar School and Hurstpierpoint College, from which he won a Smythe exhibition to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and then went with an entrance exhibition to St Thomas's. He did house jobs at St Thomas's and St James's, Balham, was senior house officer at the Royal Portsmouth Hospital, and became surgical registrar at Bury St Edmunds. He trained in cardiothoracic surgery in Leeds and Sheffield, and then spent a year doing research in Toronto studying lung transplantation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and complement activation in acute lung injury. He was appointed as a consultant surgeon in Leeds. He was a member of the specialist advisory committee on cardiothoracic training. He married Linda Anne Whale in 1969, by whom he had three sons, Richard, David and Mark. He died on 24 January 1998 of metastatic melanoma.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008907
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Morrison, Ian Middleton (1922 - 1995)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-24
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/380395380395
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Ian Middleton was born in Troon, Ayrshire, on 20 October 1922. His father, John, was a medical practitioner and his mother was Emily, née Middleton. He went to school at Hymer's College, Hull, and then went on to the University of Aberdeen, having obtained first place in the medical bursary competition of 1939. Following qualification in 1944 he served in the RAMC in Egypt and Palestine from 1945 to 1948. He became a Fellow of the College in 1952 and specialised in cardiothoracic surgery. He was appointed a consultant in cardiothoracic surgery with the Liverpool Regional Hospital Board in 1959 and was based on the unit at Broadgreen Hospital, although he held appointments in other outlying hospitals in Merseyside and North Wales. In 1955 he married Ceinwen Evans, by whom he had three children - two daughters, Anne and Margaret - and a son, John. As had his grandfather, John, his own father and his uncle James, John qualified in medicine from Aberdeen University. He married Ruth Cheyne, also a medical graduate from Aberdeen. Ian died after a long illness on 24 May 1995.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008212
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Sengupta, Amarendra (1933 - 1987)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-07-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007600-E007699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379807379807
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Amarendra Sengupta was born in Calcutta, India, on 10 January 1933 and qualified MB, BS at the University of Calcutta in 1956. After holding junior appointments at the Christian Medical College in Vellore he came to England in 1958 to obtain further general surgical training in Swindon and Northampton. Subsequently he became surgical registrar in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery at the London Chest Hospital and Southampton Chest Hospital respectively. He became a Fellow in 1962 having obtained the Fellowship of the Edinburgh College in the previous year. In 1963 he obtained a research fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, where he undertook studies with the basic problems involved with the implantation of the artificial heart. He became chief resident in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery at the Clinic in 1963 and later at Mount Sinai Hospital, Cleveland. He obtained the Fellowship Diploma in Surgery of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 1967 and certification by the American Boards in general surgery in 1970 and thoracic surgery in 1971. In 1969 Sengupta went into private surgical practice in Rochester, New York, with attending appointments at Rochester General Hospital, St Mary's Hospital, Park Ridge Hospital, Rochester, and became Clinical Associate Professor of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery in the University of Rochester School of Medicine. He died on 6 January 1987, four days before his fifty-fourth birthday.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007624
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Gunning, Alfred James (1918 - 2011)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Raymond Hurt
Publication Date 2011-12-20 2012-10-31
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001700-E001799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373966373966
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Alfred Gunning was a cardiothoracic surgeon in Oxford, perhaps best known for his work on replacement heart valves. He was born on 21 November 1918 in Dullstroom, South Africa, the son of George Ronald Gunning, a police sergeant, and Kathleen Gunning née Dunne, a housewife. He attended the Christian Brothers' College, Kimberly, and then the University of Cape Town Medical School, where he was a contemporary of Christiaan Barnard and came under the influence of Charles Saint at Groote Schuur Hospital. He went to England, attended the primary and final fellowship courses, and also the ear, nose and throat course at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1949. Following junior surgical posts he was appointed as a first assistant to Philip Allison in Leeds, an acknowledged expert on oesophageal surgery. In 1964 Allison was appointed Nuffield Professor of Surgery at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and Alfred moved with him. He was soon granted consultant status and began to develop the new specialty of open-heart surgery. Alfred spent six months with Kirklin at the Mayo Clinic, and brought back an early type of heart-lung machine to replace the earlier technique of profound hypothermia for the treatment of congenital heart disease in children. In association with a Spanish surgeon, Carlos Duran, he developed a reliable method to preserve human heart valves by a freeze-drying technique. He subsequently introduced the technique to a fellow South African surgeon, Donald Ross, at the National Heart Hospital in London, where the first homograft valve replacement operation was performed in 1962. Because of the difficulty in obtaining human valves, Alfred researched the use of pig valves (identical in size to those of humans) and performed the first aortic valve replacement with a pig valve on a 56-year-old man in 1964. Alfred was later appointed to the Churchill Hospital in Oxford and developed a simple portable heart-lung machine to perform emergency pulmonary embolectomy in peripheral hospitals, an innovation subsequently adopted by Matthias Paneth at the Brompton Hospital, London. In association with Macfarlane and Biggs at the haemophilia unit, Alfred also undertook hazardous open-heart and thoracic surgery on haemophiliac patients. He was a remarkable all-round surgeon, whose operating lists often included abdominal and gynaecological surgery. Problems with funding, and therefore a failure to develop cardiac surgery in Oxford, were a major disappointment to him in the later stages of his career. He was a remarkably unassuming surgeon who nevertheless inspired dedication in those who worked with him. On one occasion he entered the ward late at night and was mistaken by the nurse for the plumber, and was asked to repair a leaking tap. He fixed the tap and then asked the nurse if he could now do his ward round! He was a member of Pete's Club, a travelling surgical club where the only rule was that 'no case that is presented shall throw credit on the presenter'. Only errors of judgement were discussed, and members consequently learnt a tremendous amount, much more than at other national surgical meetings. In 1987, on retirement from the NHS, Alfred returned to Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, where he spent five years as a senior lecturer, doing thoracic surgery. He later became acting head of the department until a full-time professor could be appointed. During his retirement he enjoyed squash and parachuting, and in South Africa bunjee jumping and white water rafting, as well as developing an interest in medical history. He was a remarkable and innovative surgeon who had an international reputation as a lecturer. Sadly, he did not receive in England the acknowledgement and recognition that was due to him, perhaps because of his somewhat unconventional attitude. He married Mary Janet ('Mollie') in 1949. She predeceased him. They had two sons, Kevin, who became director of the John Farman intensive care unit at Addenbrooke's Hospital, and Andrew, and a daughter, Peta. Alfred died on 10 August 2011.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001783
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Milstein, Benjamin Bethel (1918 - 2013)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Raymond Hurt
Publication Date 2013-06-12 2013-10-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004000-E004099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376272376272
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Ben Milstein was a consultant thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge. He was one of the unsung heroes of cardiothoracic surgery. He was born in Dublin on 30 September 1918, the first son of orthodox Jewish immigrant parents, Hershel and Rebecca Milstein. The family later moved to Hampstead, where Hershel worked as a tailor. Ben attended St Marylebone Grammar School and won an open scholarship to University College Hospital (UCH), London, where he qualified in 1942, and abandoned all his Jewish beliefs. After resident appointments at UCH, he joined the Army and served from 1942 to 1946. He was a medical officer to various artillery units and was mentioned in despatches in 1945. Following his demobilisation, he returned to UCH, gaining early experience of thoracic surgery under R S Pilcher. He also trained with Oswald Tubbs at the Brompton Hospital, and was a senior registrar to Sir (later Lord) Russell Brock at Guy's Hospital. He was appointed as a consultant surgeon at the Brook Hospital and Preston Hall Sanatorium, before his appointment as a cardiothoracic surgeon at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, in 1957, where tuberculosis surgery was performed, with virtually no cardiac surgery. Ben built this unit up into one of the most prestigious cardiothoracic units in England. In 1958 he performed the first open-heart surgery at Papworth, the repair of an atrial septal defect under hypothermia, and the following year carried out an operation using an artificial heart-lung machine. In 1969 Ben, in association with Roy Calne, investigated the possibility of cardiac transplantation in animals, but the work was abandoned due to lack of funding. Three years later Terence English was appointed as a locum, and Milstein wanted their working relationship to be one of cooperation rather than the competition, which occurred in many other cardiothoracic units. With Milstein's support and in face of strong opposition English campaigned to develop a heart transplant service at Papworth, and in 1979 the first successful human transplantation in England was carried out at Papworth. Milstein later ruefully said that English ended up with a knighthood while he remained Mr Milstein! In 1956 Ben gave a Hunterian lecture on cardiac arrest and resuscitation; a year later he was given a Jacksonian prize for his work on the pathology and treatment of aneurysms. In 1963 his book *Cardiac arrest and resuscitation* (London, Lloyd-Luke Medical Books) was published. He was editor of *Thorax* from 1978 to 1983, and president of the Thoracic Society in 1980. He was a founder member of Pete's Club, where cardiothoracic surgeons discussed their work. The only rule was that no case should throw credit on the presenter: only errors of judgement were discussed. As a consequence, the members learnt a tremendous amount at these meetings. Ben presented many times, though his subsequent treatment of these cases always demonstrated his surgical skill! His surgical career spanned the entire development of cardiac surgery, from early closed operations on the mitral and aortic valves, to open-heart surgery for the repair of damaged valves and closure of congenital septal defects. In addition, he maintained an active interest in lung surgery. At Papworth he was known for his wise counsel and forthright attitude, as well as his devotion to his work. He was thought by some to be difficult, but this was due to his emphasis on a high standard of work. A Cambridge general practitioner who developed a lifelong friendship with Ben described him as a free thinker and an iconoclast all his life. He was a brilliant conversationalist and knowledgeable on a very large range of subjects. After retirement he devoted much time to the restoration of antique furniture, the manufacture of violins, his garden, painting and his passion for music, often irritating his family by playing Radio Three very loudly in his house and car. He married Margaret Hargreaves in 1941, whom he had met at medical school over a shared cadaver. She later became a chest physician. They had three daughters, Susan, Diana and Anne. After Margaret died in 1994 he was ably supported by his partner Judith Chivers. He died on 22 April 2013, aged 94.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004089
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Smith, Roger Abbey (1916 - 2016)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Paddy Matthews
Publication Date 2017-03-16 2017-03-23
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/381508381508
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Roger Abbey Smith was a consultant surgeon at Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry. He was born in Birkenhead. At the age of 11 he was deeply affected by the early death of his mother from psittacosis pneumonia caught from the family parrot, despite being attended by Henry Cohen, arguably the most celebrated physician of the 20th century. His father never remarried and, having three brothers, Roger was brought up in an entirely male household. He attended Birkenhead School, and went on to study medicine at Liverpool School of Medicine, winning the A C Rich prize in medicine and the gold medal for obstetrics and gynaecology. His mother's death set him on course for a medical career, with a focus on pulmonary disease. He qualified in 1940 and, after becoming a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1943, enlisted in the RAMC. He saw active service first on D-day aboard the hospital ship *Batavia* and then in Burma. He was subsequently posted to the Augusta Victoria Hospital - a 1,200 bed hospital - in Jerusalem, which had been requisitioned as the 16th British General Hospital. This was where his interest in thoracic surgery began under George Qvist, later consultant surgeon to the Royal Free Hospital, and Lloyd Rusby, later chest physician at the London Hospital. After demobilisation and a spell at St Wulstan's Hospital, Malvern, a large TB sanatorium, he left for a year in Sri Lanka under the Colombo Plan, sailing there and back with his wife Teddie and three children. On his return in 1953, he was appointed as a consultant thoracic surgeon to the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board, based at the King Edward VII Memorial Sanatorium at Hertford Hill, near Warwick. In the late 1960's, the chest unit moved to the new Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry, where Roger remained for the rest of his professional career, holding satellite clinics in Worcester (with Stan Kalinowski) and at Burton upon Trent. Over time his principal clinical interests were TB, oesophageal and lung cancer surgery. Roger was the editor of *Thorax* from 1970 to 1976, and co-editor with R E Smith of *Surgery of the oesophagus: the Coventry Conference: proceedings of a conference held at the Postgraduate Medical Centre, Coventry, on 14th and 15th July, 1971* (London, Butterworths) in 1972. With J Leigh Collis and D B Clarke, he co-edited the 4th edition of *d'Abreu's practice of cardiothoracic surgery* (London, Edward Arnold) in 1976. During his career, he wrote over 25 articles in eight different journals, and contributed to five international textbooks. In 1974, he was elected president of the Thoracic Society, and in 1976 president of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery. From 1975 to 1979 he was an adviser in cardiothoracic surgery to the Department of Health under the chief medical officer, Sir Henry Yellowlees. Roger travelled, operated and lectured abroad, mainly in Spain, the Benelux countries and America, including the Mayo Clinic, and the Massachusetts General Hospital. He was an honorary member of many international thoracic associations. Roger took a keen interest in the careers of his junior staff, but, I am told, terrified the theatre staff, demanding nothing but the very highest standards. He retired in 1979 to rural Herefordshire. He was an enthusiastic gardener, a keen ornithologist - particularly knowledgeable on birds of prey - and enjoyed salmon fishing and shooting. He holidayed every year with his family in the hills above Harlech in north Wales, the childhood home of his mother. He died peacefully on 24 July 2016, having lived in his own home until the last fortnight of his life, three weeks short of his 100th birthday. He was survived by Teddie, his wife of 73 years, his four children, 12 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009325
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Grant, Alexander Falconer (1926 - 1990)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-05-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007200-E007299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379473379473
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Alexander Falconer Grant was born on 1 February 1926 in Sydney, Australia. His father, Chesborough Grant, was a public servant and his mother, Henrietta, née Leary, a nursing sister. Both his brothers became surgeons and both were awarded the OBE. He attended North Sydney Boys' High School and Sydney University where he gained his MB BS in 1948. He was a Group Captain in the Reserve Medical Service of the Royal Australian Air Force. In 1956 he joined the staff of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney as a cardiothoracic surgeon. The following year he became assistant honorary cardiothoracic surgeon and in 1959 honorary cardiothoracic surgeon. In 1986, the year he retired, he became consultant cardiothoracic surgeon. He married Joan Alice Degotardi, also a Sydney medical graduate, on 7 January 1950. They had two sons, Alexander who became staff urologist at Newcastle Hospital, and Simon who became a consultant physician at Bowral Hospital; their daughters, Fiona and Annabel, trained as nurses. In his youth Grant was a keen rugby player and was awarded his university blue. Later he took up golf and became the captain of the Avondale Golf Club. He is thought to have died sometime in 1990.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007290
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Siddons, Arthur Harold Makins (1911 - 2002)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-12-07
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/381115381115
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Arthur Siddons was a consultant thoracic surgeon at St George's Hospital in London. He was born on 17 January 1911 in Harrow, Middlesex, and was sent to Harrow School. He went on to Jesus College, Cambridge, and then to St George's Hospital, where he qualified in 1935. In 1941, he was appointed as a temporary surgeon at St George's. From 1942 he was a surgical specialist in the RAFVR. Following demobilisation, he returned to St George's, specialising in cardiothoracic surgery. He was a member of the Court of Examiners at the College from 1958 to 1964 and wrote articles on pulmonary surgery and on cardiac pacemakers. He married Eleanor Mary née Oliver and they had a son and daughter. Mountains, dinghy sailing and travel were among his favourite pastimes. His death was reported to the College by the Royal College of Physicians as having occurred prior to April 2003.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008932
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Shanahan, Mark Xavier (1932 - 2008)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Alan E Farnsworth
Publication Date 2016-07-27 2016-08-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009100-E009199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381379381379
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Mark Xavier Shanahan was one of the distinguished surgeons who pioneered the field of Cardiothoracic Surgery at St Vincent's Hospital Sydney from the mid 1950's. He was selected to join Harry Windsor on the Hospital staff in 1963, and together with Harry, perceived the talents of Victor Chang as a Resident Medical Officer, and had him appointed to the senior staff in 1972. Mark had a stellar career at school, being top of his class at St Joseph's College Hunters Hill, before entering Sydney University at the age of 15. He graduated with Honours at the age of 21, and undertook Residency training at St Vincent's Hospital in 1953. With Harry Windsor's encouragement, he took a position at St Helier Hospital London, leading to a position of Senior Surgical Registrar before working at St Francis Hospital, New York prior to returning to St Vincent's Hospital as an Honorary Cardiothoracic Surgeon in 1963. With Harry Windsor and Victor Chang, Mark pioneered many advances in cardiac surgery, including valve replacement, coronary artery surgery, early valve replacement for endocarditits, positive pressure ventilation for crushed chest injury, mechanical heart assistance and repair of defects following myocardial infarction. Mark was one of a group to first identify subacute heart rupture after myocardial infarction and correct this with excellent long-term survival. He also played a major role in the introduction of cardiac transplantation with Harry Windsor and Victor Chang. Mark was extremely gifted in many ways. He was a brilliant student. During his medical Residency he was a vocalist with a jazz band. He was also an excellent sportsman and at school was an A Grade cricketer and in latter years a low handicap golfer and senior surf ski champion. Mark was revered by those who worked with him. He never expected more of others than he did of himself. He was a superb teacher and wonderful mentor. He felt deeply for his patients, staff and colleagues, and often pressed their causes to the limit. His personal leadership built up nursing and paramedical teams with groups of cardiologists and anaesthetists, which formed a cardiac surgical service as good as any. Mark died of metastatic carcinoma of the thyroid. He was attended by St Vincent's Hospital staff throughout his long illness and, at his request went home to Merimbula from St Vincent's to be with his family and friends just days before his death. He is survived by his wife, Josephine. He had 4 children, Antoinette, William, Melanie (deceased) and Paul, and 8 grandchildren. His funeral occurred in Merimbula on August 14 attended by Australian and overseas colleagues, former patients, and friends from his local community. He will be remembered as a fine surgeon, a great colleague, role model and as a generous, thoughtful, dedicated and deeply spiritual human being.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009196
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Kitiyakara, Kalyanakit (1929 - 1987)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-06-05
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007300-E007399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379577379577
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Kalyanakit Kitiyakara was born in Bangkok on 20 September 1929, the son of His Serene Highness Prince Nakhatra of Chandaburi who was later to become Thai Ambassador to the Court of St James. His great grandfather was King Rama V, Chulalongkorn, his younger sister is Queen Sirikit and his brother-in-law King Bhumipol Adulyadej of Thailand who is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. His early education was in Bangkok and after the war he came to London for secondary education before entering Guy's Hospital Medical School. He qualified in 1956 and two years later became house surgeon to Lord Brock, whose dedication and enthusiasm inspired him to embark on a career in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery. He visited many clinics in the United States to complete his training before returning to Thailand to the post of consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the Siraraj Hospital Medical School, Mahidol University, Bangkok. In 1981 he was appointed Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Ramathibodi Hospital Medical School and in the same year was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. He wrote extensively on thymectomy for myasthenia gravis, the surgery of aortic aneurysms and reconstructive surgery for the regurgitant mitral valve as well as being the author of a textbook of cardiothoracic surgery. He married on 7 January 1957 Miss Arun Snidwongs na Ayudhya and there was one son and one daughter of the marriage. His recreational interests were sailing and farming. The last years of his life were clouded by a long and debilitating illness and he died on 15 May 1987 aged 58.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007394
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Pagano, Domenico (1962 - 2022)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Sir Bruce Keogh
Publication Date 2023-01-11
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010200-E010299
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Domenico (Dom) Pagano was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham and a professor of medicine at the University of Birmingham. He was born in Pompei, Italy, where he received a classical education including philosophy, of which he was rightly proud. After school he studied medicine in Naples, graduating cum laude in 1987. He then embarked on cardiovascular surgical training in Bologna, where he met his future wife, an English teacher named Donna. In 1989 they moved to England together, settling in Stoke-on-Trent. Here he embarked on UK surgical training, dropping down the ladder to restart as a house officer in surgery. Two years later, in 1991, he progressed to the Birmingham surgical registrar rotation, gaining his FRCS in 1992. He then switched to become a senior house officer in cardiothoracic surgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where he made his mark, joining the West Midlands training scheme in cardiothoracic surgery and becoming a consultant at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in 2002. Dom’s father was in agriculture, running a successful seed business in Naples. He was strict, imbuing in Dom an immutable sense of right and wrong. This was softened by his grandmother, who developed in him a lifelong interest in cooking, which was to be supplemented later in life with an encyclopaedic knowledge of wines and a treasured, eclectic wine cellar. His classical education gave him an analytical approach to everything including surgery. His early research focused on the identification of hibernating myocardium using positron emission tomography, working closely with a fellow Italian Paolo Camici, a British Heart Foundation professor of cardiology at Hammersmith Hospital. This research led to a Hunterian professorship and an MD. He went on to conduct several medium scale clinical trials largely around myocardial metabolism and protection. His understanding of research and analytical methods made him, on the one hand, an excellent and popular surgical trainer with outstanding surgical results, but on the other led him into conflict with peers less well versed in the cardiac surgical literature, particularly at multidisciplinary team meetings. Not long after he became a consultant his wife, Donna, died tragically, leaving him a single parent to his daughters Marie-Claire and Beatrice while they were still young. A loving and caring parent, Domenico did all in his power to support them through challenging times and was fiercely proud of them, considering them his greatest achievement in life. This tragedy also drove his professional determination to make a difference. He published over 150 research papers during his career. It was in the subject of health policy and guidelines where he particularly made his mark, advancing the clinical quality agenda in his own hospital, and addressing several very controversial topics. These included studying the increased risk facing patients who were admitted to hospital at the weekend and duality of interest in clinical guidelines, especially those developed by clinical societies including the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS), of which he became secretary general in 2017. Corruption and professional self-interest were anathema to him, and he was fearless in calling them out, often making enemies in the process. ‘Never whisper in the presence of wrong’ was one of his favourite quotes. During this time he also struggled with modernising EACTS, financially and professionally, in part because of the coronavirus pandemic, in part because of his style and in part due to resistance to change in a complex multinational society. He eventually stepped down from the role due to a combination of dissatisfaction at the pace of change and his own deteriorating health. He loved the values of the NHS. He was appalled by the departure of the UK from the European Union, which made him reflect on his time in Stoke, which he felt was tainted by a perception that he was treated as an inferior Italian; treatment he later referred to as racist. Domenico loved his family, wine, good food and Juventus Football Club. Although he lived in England through love for his daughters and the NHS, his heart remained firmly in his beloved Italy, where he now lies in a crypt overlooking the Bay of Naples facing the sun. He was survived by his daughters, his sister Anna and his father Carlo.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010200
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Nicks, George Rowan (1913 - 2011)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Raymond Hurt
Publication Date 2011-11-10 2012-11-14
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001500-E001599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373744373744
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Rowan Nicks was a cardiothoracic surgeon in Sydney, who in later life became one of the most well-known and admired surgeons in Australia, noted especially for his work in promoting the training of surgeons in developing countries. He was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on 24 February 1913 to George Anthony Nicks, a timber mill owner, and his wife, Laura Nicks née Logan. He was the younger of two brothers. As he grew older, he leaned further away from his father and his life in commerce, and became closer to his Irish mother, whose considerable influence encouraged him to study and later to become a surgeon. This was important and significant. He was educated at Auckland Grammar School, Knox College, Dunedin, and later at Otago Medical School. After an old-style apprenticeship to Kenneth Mackenzie, senior surgeon in Auckland, he sailed to England as a ship's surgeon to study for the primary FRCS examination under John Kirk at the Middlesex Hospital. Following a meeting with Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor, he joined the Royal Navy (from 1940 to 1946) and during periods of leave visited the Brompton Hospital as he had become attracted to chest surgery. He then decided that this was to be his future career. He obtained his English fellowship in 1945 and worked for a year at the Brompton Hospital under Tudor Edwards and Sir Clement Price Thomas - this led later to his appointment in 1947 as surgeon to a newly created thoracic unit at Greenlane Hospital in Auckland. He had been awarded a travelling scholarship to visit Clarence Crafoord in Sweden, Johann Holst and Carl Semb in Norway, and Edward Churchill and R Swert in the United States. In 1952 a further period of study leave enabled him to visit Russell Brock in London, John W Kirklin at the Mayo Clinic and Alfred Blalock in Baltimore. In 1955 he was invited to move to Australia, to a full-time appointment at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney. This he somewhat reluctantly accepted, but under his direction and against considerable local opposition this new unit became a leading Australian cardiothoracic centre with an international reputation. He received a government grant, which enabled his team to design the first automatic pacemaker. His wife Mary Mattinson, a St Thomas' Hospital trained theatre sister, whom he had met in England at the Haslar Royal Naval Hospital in 1941, died from leukaemia in 1969 and was a devastating blow for Rowan, especially as they had no children. He became restless, retired from his appointments in Sydney, and decided to spend time in India and Africa to teach the mysteries of cardiothoracic surgery to the new generation of young surgeons in the developing world. From 1970 to 1972, he was a visiting professor in Kampala (Uganda), Delhi and Shiraz (Iran). He wrote: 'I regarded myself as an uncomfortable catalyst between the old and new worlds. I believed that medical horizons were limitless and that we should rise to the ideals of our profession.' Apart from this clinical work overseas he worked tirelessly with the Royal Australasian College to promote surgical training opportunities in Australia and New Zealand for surgeons from developing countries. In 1991 he established the first of the various Rowan Nicks scholarships, initially intended for surgeons from African and Asian countries. Over the next 20 years, 48 scholars from 20 countries were awarded these scholarships, the recipients of which were enabled to obtain training and experience that would otherwise have been unavailable. He also established an exchange fellowship between Australasia and the UK and the Republic of Ireland. These fellowship programs increased interaction between the surgical communities of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom in both research and clinical practice. Not surprisingly, in 2005 he received the RACS International Medal, to add to his several other college decorations, including membership of the Court of Honour. He became president of several Australian surgical societies, was a member of the court of examiners of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, and wrote extensively on almost every aspect of cardiovascular, pulmonary and oesophageal surgery. He published three notable books - *Surgeons all: the story of cardiothoracic surgery in Australia and New Zealand* (Sydney, Hales and Iremonger, 1984), *The dance of life: the life and times of an antipodean surgeon* (Melbourne, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, 1996), his fascinating autobiography, and *By the way* (Potts Point, NSW, 1999), an anthology of his poetry. Belatedly, in the eyes of many, in 2010 he became an Officer of the Order of Australia in recognition of his huge contributions to Australian surgery. He bought an apartment overlooking Sydney harbour at Potts Point, where he swam regularly until his late eighties, and where he died peacefully on 26 May 2011, in his 98th year.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001561
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Paul, Arthur Terence Sahanandan (1915 - 2008)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by John Blandy
Publication Date 2012-02-17 2014-03-28
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002000-E002099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374222374222
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Arthur Terence Sahanandan ('A T S') Paul was a pioneering cardiothoracic surgeon in Sri Lanka. He was born on 5 September 1915 in Colombo, in what was then Ceylon, into a distinguished Tamil family. His father, Samuel Chelliah Paul, was a senior surgeon at the General Hospital, Colombo, and the first Sri Lankan to obtain the FRCS England in 1901 by examination. His mother was Dora Eleanor née Asarappa. Both his paternal and maternal grandfathers were doctors, and A T S' elder brother, Milroy Paul, was the first professor of surgery at the University of Ceylon in Colombo. A T S was educated at the Royal College, Colombo, and then went on to University College Colombo and Ceylon Medical College. He graduated in 1940 with first class honours and three distinctions. In the same year he won a prize for a drawing of Rabindranath Tagore, built both a boat and a model aeroplane, and captained the cricket team in which he was the star bowler. From 1941 to 1946, he was a captain in the Ceylon Medical Corps, attached to the 132 Command General Hospital and then to the Ceylon Light Infantry at China Bay Trincomalee. He was a demonstrator in anatomy at the University of Colombo in 1946. He then went to London, to King's College Hospital Medical School, where he worked under Sir Cecil Wakeley and E G Muir, and then the Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith. In 1966 he was trained by Charles A Hufnagel at Georgetown University, USA, in cardio-pulmonary bypass techniques used in open heart surgery. In 1950, he was appointed as a surgeon to the thoracic unit, General Hospital in Colombo, the first such unit established in Ceylon, retiring in 1975. When he began work at the General Hospital there was a high incidence of tuberculosis and rheumatic heart disease, and over the course of his career he saw a remarkable development in the specialty. For many years the Colombo unit was the only cardiothoracic unit on the island, so he organised annual visits to the north, taking his entire nursing and surgical team with him. He also trained several generations of cardiothoracic surgeons, who eventually set up new units throughout Sri Lanka. From 1975 to 1980, he was a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and a consultant surgeon at Kenyatta National Hospital, setting up the first cardiac surgery unit in Nairobi. He was Hunterian professor of our college in 1966. Among his many publications, he wrote a self-published autobiography, *My trek to the heart: a cardiac surgeon's story of adventure and endeavour between 1920 and 1980* (Colombo, 2002). He continued to be involved in sport, playing cricket into his ninth decade, and becoming a member of motor yacht and power boat clubs. He painted in pastels and oils, and created model aircraft. In 1946 he married Marie Baptista, whom he had met while she was serving in the Indian Army Nursing Service at Trincomalee. His son, Surendramohan Chandpal Paul is a surgeon at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Huntingdon. A T S Paul died on 28 April 2008 in the National Hospital, Sri Lanka, formerly the General Hospital, following a short illness.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002039
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Ebert, Paul Allen (1932 - 2009)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Denton A Cooley
Publication Date 2014-02-24 2014-03-28
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005000-E005099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377206377206
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Paul Allen Ebert was an American thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon. He is best known for his contributions to the repair of complex cardiac anomalies in infants and for his directorship of the American College of Surgeons. He is also remembered as a researcher, educator and athlete. Paul Ebert was born in Columbus, Ohio, on 11 August 1932. He attended Ohio State University in Columbus, where he became a widely recognised student athlete, excelling at both baseball and basketball. He was recruited to play professional baseball for the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates, but declined their offers in order to pursue a medical career. After earning his medical degree from Ohio State University in 1958, Ebert completed his surgery internship and residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital under the direction of Alfred Blalock. Ebert spent two years as a senior assistant surgeon at the National Heart Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and then went on to become a professor of surgery at Duke University Medical Center. Later he served as chairman of the department of surgery at Cornell University Medical College (from 1971 to 1975) in New York City and then as chairman of the department of surgery at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF) (from 1975 to 1986). While at UCSF, he contributed many advances to the field of cardiovascular surgery, specifically pertaining to the primary surgical repair of complex cardiac anomalies in infants. In particular, he introduced clinical methods that greatly enhanced the survival of patients with truncus arteriosus and that enabled neonates with transposition of the great arteries to undergo the arterial switch operation. In 1986, Ebert left clinical practice to become executive director of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. With him at the helm, the ACS expanded its member services, established an extensive managed-care educational programme, and maintained a strong lobby in Congress on behalf of patient choice. He also organised the construction of a new building to serve as a permanent home for the college. This building also houses the administrative offices of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the Society for Vascular Surgery, the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, and other professional organisations. Ebert was a member of many surgical societies and served as president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the Society of University Surgeons and the Western Thoracic Surgical Association, among others. He was also a member of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars and was vice chair of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery (from 1987 to 1989). He wrote or co-authored 198 peer-reviewed scientific articles. He was also a popular and gifted surgical educator. In retirement, Ebert enjoyed golfing with the Senior Cardiovascular Surgical Society, a small group of surgical educators from major US medical institutions who met to play golf and exchange surgical experiences. In 1989, he received the Theodore Roosevelt award, the National Collegiate Athletic Association's highest honour, which is given to varsity athletes who have achieved high recognition in their adult lives. On 20 April 2009, Paul Ebert died of a heart attack sustained while playing golf. He was 76. He was survived by Louise Joyce (née Parks), his wife of 55 years, and by their three children (Leslie, Mike and Julie) and five grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005023
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Shah, Nanalal Jivan (1925 - 1966)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-10-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006000-E006099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378249378249
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Nanalal Jivan Shah, usually addressed as John Shah, was born in the Seychelles on 25 April 1921, and after going to school there, subsequently came over to Guy's Hospital to study medicine and graduated MB, BS in 1945. He won the Hallett Prize at the Primary Fellowship, and completed the FRCS in 1949. He then served as a surgical specialist in the RAF, and afterwards went to the Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith to be trained in cardiothoracic surgery by W B Cleland. This experience, especially of open heart surgery, confirmed his wish to continue in this specialty, and in 1955 he went to Birmingham, first as registrar in thoracic surgery and later as senior registrar. He took a prominent part in establishing open heart surgery in the Birmingham area, particularly at the King Edward VII Memorial Chest Hospital, Warwick, where he was appointed consultant cardiothoracic surgeon. He also worked at the Dudley Road Hospital, and had the distinction in 1964 to be appointed consultant associate to the United Birmingham Hospitals in recognition of his outstanding contributions as an operator and also as a colleague and teacher. Early in 1964 he suffered a coronary attack, but in spite of this and a bad family history of heart disease he continued at his exacting duties till his sudden death on 23 May 1966. He left a widow and two children, having been a devoted husband and father pitifully snatched from them by an unduly early death.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006066
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Venn, Graham Erskine (1954 - 2013)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

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
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Wade, John David (1914 - 2013)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2016-07-29 2019-10-28
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/381414381414
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details John David Wade was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Born on 2 May 1914 in Cardiff, he was the eldest son of James Owen David Wade OBE FRCS and his wife Kate née Jones who was a domestic science teacher. His mother’s father was a Baptist minister and his father, a consultant surgeon at Cardiff Royal Infirmary, came from a medical family. Of his father’s three brothers one, Thomas Wade, was Chief Medical Officer for Wales, another, Earnest, was a GP in Newport, Monmouthshire and Oscar became chief pharmacist at the London Hospital. John’s younger brother the late James Stanley Hilary (Larry) FRCS was a consultant general surgeon at Cardiff Royal Infirmary; his brother Owen was a consultant physician in Birmingham and the third, Thomas H Wade, was a GP in Harley Street. Later he recalled that one of his earliest memories was of his father dressing the wounds of a soldier at Whitchurch Military Hospital at the end of the First World War. All four brothers assisted their father when operating in various Welsh valley hospitals during their training, although only Larry and he became surgeons. He also had six medically qualified cousins including one, John Wade Thomas, also a GP in Newport. Educated at Repton School from 1928 to 1933, he then studied medicine at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University and trained at University College Hospital (UCH), London, graduating MB BCh in 1939. Doing house jobs at UCH he was mentored by Julian Taylor and Arthur Gardham. Briefly he worked at Cardiff Royal Infirmary as a registrar with David John Harries. He enlisted in the RAMC in early 1940 and served as an RMO initially in a general hospital at Offranville, near Dinard, France before being moved to Brittany and then evacuated from St Malo. For a while he was posted to a camp near Skipton in Yorkshire where he said he was compelled to learn to ride a motorbike to carry out his duties. While in London during the Blitz he obtained the fellowship of the college and was mentored by Sir Ronald Raven. From 1942 to 1946 he was a graded surgeon and surgical specialist serving in the Middle East. By circuitous means – a liner from Glasgow to Durban, another to Bombay and a troop ship - he ended up in Basrah, Iraq and from there was posted to Shaiba in the Lebanon where he ran a heat stroke centre. After the landings in Italy his division was moved to Taranto in the toe of Italy where he was, he recalled, billeted with an Italian ophthalmic surgeon whose family were very friendly.* On his discharge from the Army he returned to Cardiff Royal Infirmary as a senior surgical registrar until he was offered a post as senior registrar at Sully Tuberculosis Hospital in Cardiff under Norman Barrett and William Paton Cleveland from the Brompton Hospital. In 1950 he spent a year on a Dorothy Temple Cross fellowship in tuberculosis with the Medical Research Council and a further year as a clinical and research fellow at the Harvard University Hospital in the USA. Appointed consultant surgeon in cardiothoracic surgery at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in 1952, he remained there until his retirement in 1978. A pioneer of open heart surgery he was involved in the first such operations in Edinburgh. During his time there he undertook research on cardiac surgery with Andrew Logan and Sir Michael Woodruff and published many papers on the topic. He was an examiner at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and also examined for the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Outside medicine he enjoyed dinghy sailing, an enthusiasm he had developed while at Cambridge and kept up through membership of various sailing clubs throughout his life. He built his own 38 ft Trintella sailing boat in his Cambridge garden and sailed her to Dale, near Milford Haven, the West coast of Ireland and to France. Golf was also a passion which he shared with his colleagues in Edinburgh and he was a member of the Luffness Golf Club on the Firth of Forth. As a family they had enjoyed camping holidays in Europe and he went windsurfing with his grandchildren. He met his wife, Agnes E Summerfield in Italy at the Bari Military Hospital where she was serving as a nurse. They married on 14 February 1946 and had three daughters, Rosemary, Hilary (named after his surgeon brother) and Susan. On retirement they moved to Cambridge and spent five years nursing their daughter Rosemary, who died of a brain tumour in 1984. He undertook locum work at Exeter Hospital from 1977 to 1984. Latterly, when he was aged between 70 and 80, he travelled overseas doing locums in Montserrat, St Helena and Vanuatu. He died on 15 June 2013 aged 99 years and was survived by Agnes, Hilary and Susan, eight grandchildren and two adopted great grandchildren who were of Chinese origin.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009231
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Borst, Hans Georg (1927 - 2022)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

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
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First Title value, for Searching Weaver, Edward John Martin (1921 - 2003)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2005-10-26
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/372329372329
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details John Weaver was a cardiothoracic surgeon at the London Hospital. He was born on 7 November 1921 in Wolverhampton and educated at Clifton College, where he boxed for the school. He went on to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and then St Thomas’s Hospital. After house jobs, he was a casualty officer at St Helier’s Hospital, Carshalton, and Queen Mary’s Hospital, Stratford. He then joined the Colonial Medical Service, where he worked in Malaya. On returning to England, he specialised in cardiothoracic surgery and was senior registrar to Vernon Thompson and Geoffrey Flavell at the London Hospital. In 1962 he spent a year in Kuwait as a consultant surgeon, followed by a year in Ibadan, Nigeria. He returned to the London as consultant surgeon in 1965 and was seconded to New Zealand to learn the latest methods in cardiac surgery under Barrett Boyes. He was a very neat surgeon whose techniques were imitated by a generation of juniors. A delightful, apparently carefree person, he was a popular and highly regarded colleague. He had a passion for driving fast cars and one of his sons became a Formula 1 driver. He died on 7 April 2003, leaving a widow, Mary, and two sons.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000142
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Bonser, Robert Stuart (1953 - 2012)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Ian C Wilson
Publication Date 2012-12-21 2013-07-11
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003300-E003399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375501375501
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Robert Stuart Bonser was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham. He was born in Walsall, in the heart of the Black Country, and was educated at the local secondary school. He subsequently won a place to study medicine at Cardiff University. Following his graduation in 1977, his first intention was to become a physician, and he gained his membership of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) only two years after medical school. Bob subsequently developed an interest in cardiac surgery, completing the cardiothoracic surgical registrar rotation in the West Midlands between 1981 and 1985. With the encouragement of Leon Abrams and David Clarke he then joined the Royal Brompton Hospital and London Chest Hospital. Recognition of his talent and aptitude for cardiac surgery allowed him to rapidly progress from registrar to senior registrar. A key influence in Bob's training was a one year sabbatical with Stuart Jamieson in Minnesota. Training in cardiopulmonary transplantation at this key stage of his career, with such a pioneer in this dynamic field of surgery, allowed Bob to develop a phenomenal grounding in the specialty, which proved to be the bedrock of his future clinical progression. He took up the post of consultant at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham in 1990 and, within two years of his appointment, had developed the Birmingham heart and lung transplant unit. As director of the unit he established one of the most prolific clinical research programmes in the UK. Bob went on to perform numerous national roles, including a successful term as chairman of the Cardiothoracic Advisory Group in Transplantation. His clinical research on donor physiology and management has become a landmark in this complex area of development. In parallel with his interest in cardiothoracic transplantation Bob developed an internationally renowned aortic surgical programme, which once again was underpinned by an intensive research activity. Bob's recognition in the international aortic surgical fraternity was a reflection of his extraordinary hard work and his highly regarded surgical ability. He was always quietly spoken, modest and polite to everybody. He championed patient's rights and cared for his staff with a real passion. He was a true leader who was unanimously respected by all those who had the pleasure to work with him. Bob's tirelessly inquisitive mind stimulated him to engage in clinical and basic science research in numerous areas of cardiac surgery, collaborating locally, nationally and internationally. He published extensively on myocardial metabolism and myocardial protection strategies in cardiac surgery, organ function and preservation in heart and lung transplantation, cerebral and spinal cord metabolism and protection during aortic surgery, amongst many other areas of interest. He supervised 10 MD/PhDs, three of whom were honoured by Hunterian professorships at the Royal College of Surgeons. He attended national and international meetings across the world, making major contributions with provocative and beautifully complete pieces of work. Whilst unwell, he was in Prague on the front row at the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation when a synopsis of much of his work was presented. Bob died on 29 October 2012, aged just 59, after a period of illness which sadly shortened his prodigious career in cardiac and cardiothoracic transplant surgery. Bob fought his illness courageously and, if we are judged by what we achieve in the time we are given to achieve it, Bob had few equals.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003318
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Lennox, Stuart Craig (1932 - 2018)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Iain Lennox
Publication Date 2018-11-19 2021-06-04
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009400-E009499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381898381898
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Stuart Craig Lennox was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the Brompton Hospital, London. He was born on 25 May 1932 in Aberdeen, the son of James Craig Lennox and Agnes Lennox née Hadden. He was educated at Robert Gordon College in Aberdeen and then, from the age of 14, when he moved to London, at Minchenden Grammar School. He studied medicine at the London Hospital Medical School and qualified in 1956. As a medical student, he played football for London University. He was a house officer at the London and Southend hospitals, and then trained in general surgery at the London and in cardiothoracic surgery at the London, National Heart and Brompton hospitals (from 1960 to 1968). In 1961, he was asked to build a hypothermia unit for open-heart surgery in the department of surgery at the London Hospital and to train a team to use it. As a registrar at the National Heart Hospital, he was involved with work on heart and lung transplantation carried out at the Royal Veterinary College. Later, at the London Hospital, he studied mitral valve homografts in dogs. During his training he was awarded an Evarts Graham travelling fellowship from the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, principally at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. There he was involved in animal research, a large part of which was aimed at furthering the development of coronary artery surgery. Other experimental work included the transplantation of lungs in calves. He also gained experience of paediatric cardiac surgery, working principally for Herbert Sloan. He was particularly interested in the problems of open-heart surgery in the infant, and published papers with Sloan on this subject. After his time at Ann Arbor, he toured America, visiting cardiothoracic units in most mainland states. He returned to the USA in 1968, spending several months at the Texas Heart Institute with Denton Cooley. In 1968, Lennox was appointed as a consultant in cardiothoracic surgery at the Brompton Hospital and as a senior lecturer at the Cardiothoracic Institute, University of London. In 1976, he was also appointed as a consultant in cardiothoracic surgery at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington and, in 1980, at Mayday Hospital, Croydon. He pursued a general cardiothoracic practice, performing 300 to 400 open-heart operations a year. Half of these were coronary artery operations, the rest were for congenital heart disease and valvular disease. He also performed 40 to 50 closed-heart operations a year, mainly for patent ductus arteriosus, coarctations and to insert shunts. He operated on 100 to 150 pulmonary cases a year and, in addition, performed a few mediastinal and oesophageal operations. The Cardiothoracic Institute of the University of London was the only postgraduate establishment dealing solely with the diseases of heart and lung, and as a senior lecturer he had a large commitment to teaching and research. He taught doctors of all levels, including general practitioners, postgraduate students, overseas fellows and overseas consultants, and lectured medical students at St Mary’s, and nursing and physiotherapy students at St Mary’s and the Brompton Hospital. He was also responsible for organising and chairing the annual cardiac surgical course, and for organising the annual Brompton surgical lecture and associated symposium. He established an experimental laboratory in 1967. The research projects included the study of the effect of altering blood flow on growing piglets and its consequences to the growth of their lungs. He also looked into the effect of portopulmonary shunts, producing pulmonary hypertension on growing piglets, and heart and lung transplantation. A number of fellows gained their MDs from this work. Stuart Lennox was involved with various studies concerned with lung and heart transplantation. His particular interest was in studying the denervated pig lung, collaborating with researchers in Turin. In collaboration with V Keerthinathan in Melbourne, the laboratory also evaluated new biological conduits used for replacement of the superior vena cava, as portopulmonary shunts in infants and in coronary artery disease in clinical practice Stuart Lennox was amongst the first surgeons in the UK to perform coronary artery bypass grafts. He taught a number of fellows and registrars, who went on to become leading exponents of cardiothoracic surgery, both in Britain and around the world. He was appointed as a visiting professor to a number of American universities, including Duke, Georgia and New York University, as well as at universities in Europe and Asia, including Malaysia, Australia, China and Russia. He featured in several BBC television programmes, although he did not allow his name to be used. These included a demonstration of coronary artery bypass grafting and the Vineberg operation on *Horizon* in 1969, a demonstration of lobectomy for carcinoma of the lung on *Horizon* in 1973 and of aortic valve replacement for Jonathan Miller’s The body in question in 1978. Lennox wrote more than 100 papers and was asked to write many book chapters. He was an international editor of *Chest*. He was an elected regent of the American College of Chest Physicians (in 1982), an elected member of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (in 1983) and a council member of the American Heart Association (in 1983). In 1957, he married Brenda Giles, a physiotherapist who had trained at the London Hospital. They had four children, three of whom followed him into medicine. He retired from clinical practice in 1996 and later that year underwent an emergency mitral valve replacement. The surgeon was his former registrar Frank Wells, and the valve had been invented by his good friend Albert Starr. He retired to the country, where he took up golf and developed an interest in sculpture, becoming a guide for the Henry Moore Foundation. Stuart and Brenda’s home became a magnet for their 11 grandchildren and extended family. Stuart Lennox died on 4 August 2018 at home in his sleep. He was 86.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009494
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Bassett, Harold Frank McGhie (1923 - 1990)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-04-17
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/379289379289
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Harold Frank McGhie Bassett was born in Klang, Federated Malay States, on 4 June 1923, the son of John Harold Bassett a barrister-at-law and County Court Judge and Leila, nee McGhie. He was educated at Harrow School where he obtained an entrance exhibition before entering St Thomas's Hospital Medical School and qualifying in 1945. He served as casualty officer and thoracic house surgeon at St Thomas's Hospital before he joined the Royal Air Force to do his national service and attained the rank of Flight Lieutenant. After demobilisation he undertook registrar appointments in Aylesbury, Ipswich and the Brompton Hospital and passed the FRCS in 1954. He then served in the Newcastle Regional Chest Surgery Centre at Shotley Bridge and spent a year as senior resident in cardiovascular surgery at Toronto General Hospital before being appointed consultant cardio-thoracic surgeon to the United Manchester Hospitals. He built up a modern, first-class department with intensive care facilities and continued to work there until his retirement in 1988. He was an accomplished artist and enjoyed gardening and golf. In the past he had been an enthusiastic dinghy sailor. He married Elizabeth Chamption FFARCS in 1952 and they had one daughter and one son. After his wife's death he re-married in 1979 and is survived by his second wife Susan and the two children of his first marriage.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007106
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Molloy, Patrick John (1928 - 2020)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Allan Panting
Publication Date 2021-05-05 2021-12-09
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009900-E009999
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Having obtained cardiothoracic training in London, and considerable experience working amid the Northern Ireland Conflict, Patrick Molloy returned to New Zealand in 1973 to develop and lead the South Island’s first cardiac surgery unit in Dunedin. With the appointment by the University of Otago to a chair of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Prof Molloy was an early provider of paediatric cardiac surgery in New Zealand. He is fondly remembered for his empathy and gentlemanly demeanor towards staff and patients. Patrick (widely known as Pat) Molloy was born in Auckland to James Reuben Molloy, solicitor, and Kathleen Frances (nee Worthington), a nurse. Pat and his only sibling, Joe were identical twins. Growing up in Ellerslie in Auckland they were among the first students at St Peter’s College where Pat was a good rugby player. He completed a BSc at Auckland University and then gained entry to Otago Medical School in 1948. In Dunedin he became a keen and proficient rower representing Otago University. He completed his MB ChB in 1953. Pat spent his house surgeon years in Auckland hospitals including Green Lane Hospital where he worked with Douglas Robb and this proved to be a significant influence on his subsequent career. During this time, he met Julia Waldron, a nurse from St Bathans in Central Otago, and they married in 1954. He worked as a GP in Hamilton for two years to fund his family’s travel to the United Kingdom. In 1958, with Julia and their four children, Prudence, Brigid, Adrienne and Katherine-Mary, he set off for London to pursue a career in cardiac surgery, becoming FRCSEng in 1960. At Guy’s Hospital in London in 1960-1964 he worked alongside ground-breaking surgeons Sir Russell Brock and Donald Ross, the latter completing the UK’s first heart transplant in 1968. In 1964 Patrick was appointed to a cardiothoracic surgery consultancy at Broadgreen Hospital in Liverpool. In 1968, Pat and Julia, now with a family of nine children, with the addition of Alison, Felicity, Ruth, Veronica and Charlotte, moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, when Pat was appointed to lead the formation of a new cardiothoracic surgical unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital. This was during the period of conflict known as “the Troubles” and the older children recall numerous occasions when their father was called out in the middle of the night to help a victim of a shooting. In this emergency work he developed a technique, which is still widely used in conflict zones, for treating chest wounds resulting from the large rubber bullets used by the army. In 1970 Prof Molloy was invited to assess the needs for cardiac surgery in New Zealand. His report predicted growth in this rapidly developing field and recommended a surgical unit be set up in Dunedin. The Dunedin unit, with close connections to the University of Otago Medical School, was established in 1973, and Pat and his family, with the addition of James, Hannah being born three years later, returned from Northern Ireland so he could take up the lead role. Becoming FRACS in 1975, he devoted his skill and energy to the establishment and direction of the cardiac unit in Dunedin. He was, however, worried, about the subsequent implications of a proposal for a further cardiac surgery unit in Christchurch and told a 1977 national review that slashing Dunedin’s workload would be “disastrous”. A significant reduction in cases risked turning the Dunedin unit into a “completely inefficient nonentity”. The second cardiothoracic surgery unit in the South Island was opened in Christchurch in 1997. Pat Molloy was a man of great intelligence with an extensive knowledge of anatomy and physiology. He developed a very loyal and effective team and was held in high regard by those who worked closely with him. He had excellent relationships with his cardiology colleagues and an easy relaxed manner with his patients with whom he exchanged information in words they readily understood. He was held in very high regard by those who came under his care. Dependable in times of difficulty with a dry wit, he was a careful, skilled and compassionate surgeon, who showed empathy to all. He was a committed and engaging teacher, not only to attached surgical registrars, but also to cardiac and medical registrars he came into contact with during consultations. Pat was a member of the British Cardiac Society and the British Thoracic Society serving on its Executive Committee 1969-73. He was a regular participant in Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand activities and served on the Executive 1979-86. He was a member of the RACS Cardiothoracic Surgery Board and served as an examiner in Cardiothoracic Surgery. With the aid of a generous benefactor, Pat was instrumental in setting up and subsequently chairing the Dunedin Heart Unit Trust, assisting with local research, and educational grants. He was also a trustee of the Drug and Rehabilitation Trust. Pat retired from surgery in 1993 and became an emeritus professor the next year. His last role at the Otago Medical School was curator of the surgical museum. A skier, tennis player and rower in his early years he was keen golfer for much of his life, playing at least weekly at the Balmacewen course throughout his professional career. Golfing friends later became bridge buddies, although Pat was not renowned for his skill in this pursuit! He had an interest in geology and his children recall happy holidays scrambling over rocks to find fish fossils high in the Welsh mountains and pieces of quartz in the coldest of Central Otago rivers. For many years he was involved in the resettlement in New Zealand of Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees. The Molloys were married for 63 years, Julia Molloy dying in 2017. As well as caring for their 11 children, in the late 1970s they absorbed into their family a young woman, Kirsty McMillan, who lived next door, and in the early 80s a Cambodian refugee, Phirum Keo, who would later become deputy leader of the Opposition in Cambodia. Aged 91 years and requiring increased daily support, Patrick moved into care at the Little Sisters of the Poor in Brockville, where he was well cared for. The family remember him as an ever-present dad and granddad who listened with an open mind and was available in his quiet way through difficult and good times. Patrick Molloy is survived by his children, Prudence, Brigid, Adrienne, Katherine-Mary, Alison, Felicity, Ruth; Veronica, Charlotte, James, and Hannah, Phirum Keo and Kirsty MacMillan, 37 grandchildren and 36 great-grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009965
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Sahoy, Ronald Rabindranath (1940 - 2008)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2008-11-14 2009-05-01
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000500-E000599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372755372755
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon General surgeon
Details Ronald Sahoy was a pioneering cardiothoracic and general surgeon in the Caribbean. He was born on 3 January 1940, in Essequibo, British Guiana (now Guyana). His father was Kunandan Ramdial Sahoy, a business man who owned a trucking service, and his mother was Baidwattee née Narayan, who had worked as a clerk in the civil service in London in the sixties. Ronald was educated at the Modern Educational Institute, which had been founded by a cousin, Ongkar Narayan, the Central High School, Guyana, and Queen’s College, Guyana, where he won the Guyana Government intercollegiate scholarship. He studied medicine at the University of the West Indies, where he qualified in 1965, winning the Wilson-James surgery prize. He completed internships at the University Hospital of the West Indies in general surgery and general medicine and cardiology, followed by a senior house officer post in general and cardiothoracic surgery and a casualty officer post. He then did a general surgical rotation for two years, from which he won a Commonwealth scholarship in 1969, which took him to London to study for the FRCS. In 1970 he was clinical assistant to Norman Tanner at St James’s Hospital, Balham. Having passed the FRCS, he returned to the University Hospital of the West Indies, where he was a senior registrar in general and cardiothoracic surgery for the next three years. In 1973 he became a consultant surgeon to the National Chest Hospital, formerly the George V Memorial Hospital. There he headed the cardiothoracic team. In 1976 he entered private practice at the Medical Associates Hospital, where he was the senior surgeon and medical director. He married Pauline Rohini Samuels in 1965. Their two sons both became airline pilots. He died suddenly on 6 April 2008.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000572
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Cooley, Denton (1920 - 2016)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by O H Frazier
Publication Date 2019-12-18 2020-03-10
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009600-E009699
Occupation Cardiovascular surgeon Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Denton A Cooley was an innovative cardiovascular surgeon and founder of the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, Texas. He was born in Houston on 22 August 1920 to Mary Fraley Cooley and a prominent local dentist, Ralph Clarkson Cooley. His grandfather, Daniel Denton Cooley, was a successful Houston real estate developer. After graduating from Houston’s San Jacinto High School in 1937, Denton Cooley received his undergraduate training at the University of Texas at Austin. Being 6’4” and a talented basketball player, he was a key contributor to the team’s Southwest Conference championship win in 1939. Cooley would later say that basketball taught him the importance of practise, which later helped him develop his surgical skills, and of improving dexterity (as a surgical trainee, he would practise tying knots inside a matchbox), as well as ‘skills for coping with loss and disappointment,’ which he felt were important to his success as a surgeon. Cooley began his undergraduate studies intending to become a dentist like his father, but while visiting a doctor friend working at an emergency room, he learned to stitch wounds, and he subsequently changed his course of study from predental to premedical. In 1944, he received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins Medical School, where he then became a surgical intern for the pioneering congenital heart surgeon Alfred Blalock and participated in the first Blalock-Taussig ‘blue-baby’ operation – a successful treatment for an otherwise fatal condition. Later, after losing a patient to ventricular fibrillation during an emergency operation, Cooley designed a defibrillator that was used clinically at Johns Hopkins for almost a decade. Cooley went to London in 1950 to serve as a senior surgical registrar at the Brompton Hospital under the tutelage of Lord Russell Brock and Oswald Tubbs. There he participated in several ‘Brock operations’ – beating-heart procedures performed to treat congenital pulmonary valve stenosis. Cooley considered this an invaluable experience. He returned to Houston in 1951 to take a faculty position at Baylor College of Medicine’s department of surgery, under the leadership of Michael E DeBakey. While at Baylor, Cooley made many contributions to the field of cardiovascular surgery. Prominent among them was his groundbreaking work (with DeBakey) in repairing aortic aneurysms. He also, in 1957, performed the first successful carotid endarterectomy. Cooley had the opportunity to observe open-heart surgery for the first time in June 1955, when he visited pioneering heart surgeon C Walton Lillehei at the University of Minnesota. Lillehei was the first to perform meaningfully successful open-heart surgery, using cross-circulation to support paediatric patients undergoing repair of congenital heart defects (by connecting the patient’s circulatory system to that of a parent, which supported the patient during the operation). Upon returning to Houston, Cooley built a cardiopulmonary bypass machine from parts salvaged from a restaurant-supply store and performed Houston’s first successful open-heart operation in April 1956. That year, Cooley’s results in 95 open-heart surgery cases were the best in the world. This resulted in a large influx of patients, making Houston, Texas a leading centre for cardiovascular surgery. This success was attributable to Cooley’s speed and precision as a surgeon; he told his trainees that when a patient goes on the heart-lung machine, they begin to die, stressing the importance of speed in applying this technology. Because of his unparalleled experience, Cooley made many technical contributions to the field of cardiovascular surgery, participating in as many as 33 ‘firsts’. In 1961, he became the first surgeon to perform open-heart surgery on a Jehovah’s Witness. Initially, heart-lung machines were primed with blood, but in this case, Cooley substituted a 5% dextrose solution. By avoiding the use of blood as a prime, and thus reducing the amount of donated blood required, the number of open-heart procedures that could be performed increased exponentially. After the introduction of heart transplantation, Cooley performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States in May 1968. He performed 20 more such transplants – more than any other surgeon in the world at the time. Importantly, Cooley successfully implanted the first total artificial heart as a bridge to transplant in April 1969. His pioneering work in cardiac replacement continued with implanting the first left ventricular assist device as a bridge to transplant in 1978 and a second total artificial heart as a bridge to transplant in 1981. Cooley was also one of the initial premier heart valve surgeons. He developed his own heart valve in the mid-1960's, and he worked closely with Lillehei to introduce the standard-of-care bileaflet valves that are in widespread use today. Stemming from his many technical contributions to the field of cardiac surgery, he published more than 1,400 peer-reviewed articles in the medical literature. Cooley’s contributions to cardiovascular surgery were not solely technical. He was instrumental in introducing managed healthcare plans to cardiovascular services billing, which was an important step toward addressing the high cost of cardiac surgical procedures in the US. In 1962, while still a member of the Baylor faculty, Cooley founded the Texas Heart Institute: a dedicated research and education institution that was affiliated with St Luke’s Episcopal Hospital and Texas Children’s Hospital. Cooley believed that establishing the Institute was among his most important contributions to the field of cardiac care. A source of great pride to Cooley was his work in educating surgical fellows and residents. During his career, he trained 136 cardiothoracic surgery residents and 927 cardiovascular fellows. He was also a great supporter of the universities he attended and of his home city of Houston. As a result, many facilities have been named for him, including the Denton A Cooley Recreation Center at Johns Hopkins, the Denton A Cooley MD Hall at the Texas Medical Center Library, the Houston Zoo’s Denton A Cooley Animal Hospital, the Denton A Cooley Basketball Pavilion at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Denton A Cooley MD and Ralph C Cooley DDS University Life Center at University of Texas’ school of dentistry in Houston. He received many honours for his work. In 1967, he was awarded the René Leriche prize, the International Society of Surgery’s highest honour. In 1984, US President Ronald Reagan presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. And in 1998, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Bill Clinton. The Royal College of Surgeons of England made Cooley an honorary fellow in 1988. This was a source of great pride to him, particularly because of his training and experience under Lord Brock and Oswald Tubbs. With his wife of 67 years, former Johns Hopkins nurse Louise Goldborough Thomas, Cooley had five daughters, 16 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. Outside of Houston in Orchard, Texas, he built Cool Acres Ranch, a vacation home that became the site of many family gatherings. He continued performing open-heart operations until his early eighties. In his lifetime, his surgical group at St Luke’s completed more than 120,000 procedures with the use of cardiopulmonary bypass – more than any other team in the world. Lillehei, considered by many to be the premier cardiovascular surgeon of his time, once said that it was Cooley who deserved that title because of his early success with using cardiopulmonary bypass, rather than the cross-circulation technique Lillehei used, to support patients during the surgical correction of intracardiac defects. Denton Cooley died on 18 November 2016. He was 96.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009678
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Mehta, Meherji Phiroze Mancherji (1917 - 1983)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-06-15
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/379683379683
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Meherji Mehta was born on 5 April 1917 at Navsari and went to school at Elphinstone and Xavier's College before entering the Grant Medical College and JJ Hospital in Bombay where he qualified in 1939. He took his master's degree in surgery from Bombay University in October 1942 securing a distinction. He joined the Indian Army Medical Service and was promoted to the rank of surgeon on a regular commission but resigned in 1948. He continued his surgical training and developed a particular interest in thoracic surgery at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol. After passing the FRCS examination in 1951 he returned to India and joined the faculty at the Parsee General Hospital before his appointment to the staff at Grant Medical College and JJ Hospital. In 1960 he was promoted to Professor in the department of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery where he became a pioneer in open heart surgery. He was the first surgeon in India to use biological heart valves and in 1974 he performed the first successful coronary artery by-pass. In 1973 he also accepted the additional post of senior surgeon at the Jaslok Hospital until his retirement in 1975. Dr Mehta was a very popular teacher and colleague and an inspiration to many young surgeons in training. He was a Fellow of the International College of Angiology, member of the International Federation of Surgeons and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons of Great Britain. In 1973 he was elected President of the Association of Surgeons of India. He died on 7 July 1983.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007500
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Tubbs, Oswald Sydney (1908 - 1993)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-08
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008300-E008399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380567380567
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon General surgeon
Details Oswald Tubbs was born on 21 March 1908 in Hadley Wood, Middlesex, the son of Sydney Walton Tubbs, a chartered accountant, and his wife Mabel, née Frost, a butcher's daughter. He was educated at Shrewsbury and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he was an enthusiastic oarsman. Unhappily he was then afflicted by pulmonary tuberculosis and, there being at the time no effective chemotherapy, he was treated surgically by Russell Brock, who excised the affected lobe. The treatment was very successful and the experience determined the direction of his subsequent career. He then went to St Bartholomew's for his clinical studies and qualified there in 1932. He held junior surgical posts at his teaching hospital and at the Brompton before going to the Lahey Clinic, Boston, with a Dorothy Temple Cross Fellowship for research in tuberculosis. He was appointed to the consultant staff of both St Bartholomew's and the Brompton Hospital and in 1941 made history by ligating a patent ductus arteriosus in a patient suffering from bacterial endocarditis: the operation with sulphapyridine cover proved effective. He served in the Emergency Medical Service throughout the war and became one of the leaders of the post-war expansion of the field of cardiothoracic surgery. He advanced the surgical treatment of valvular disease but retirement came too soon to enable him to play a part in the development of coronary artery grafting. He was President of the Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons in 1971 and of the Thoracic Society in 1974. He married in 1934 Marjorie Betty Wilkins, by whom he had two children: Jill, who became a physiotherapist, and Oswald Nigel Tubbs, FRCS, an orthopaedic surgeon in Birmingham. He died on 12 November 1993 after a retirement spent happily in the garden or by the river bank. His wife Betty, whose bubbly personality was an excellent foil for his own, had predeceased him.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008384
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Monk, Ian Maxim (1916 - 1978)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-02-10
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006700-E006799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378945378945
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Ian Maxim Monk was the son of a musician who had been director of violin studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. After education at Sydney Church of England Grammar School he graduated from Sydney University in 1940. He was resident medical officer at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, and then served in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps during the second world war. He was demobilized as a surgical specialist with the rank of Major and took the Sydney mastership in surgery. He foresaw the need for thoracic surgeons in Australia and began his training with John Haywood at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He received the Gordon Craig and Nuffield Travelling Fellowship which enabled him to come to England where he was appointed RSO at the Brompton Hospital in 1947 and came under the influence of Russell (later Lord) Brock. He took the FRCS in the following year and returned to Sydney in 1950 when he was appointed thoracic surgeon to the Royal North Shore Hospital. Having embarked on thoracic surgery before the beginnings of open cardiac surgery Ian Monk, like many of his generation, had to learn things the hard way and grow with the specialty. He undertook animal work at the Veterinary School in Prospect, New South Wales, and made frequent visits to cardiac centres abroad to return home with much information. He was a regular contributor at meetings of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and wrote a number of papers which were characterised by commonsense and sound judgement. He was warden of the clinical school at Royal North Shore Hospital and was dedicated to student teaching. In November 1976 he became the third President of the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons. There is no record of the date of his marriage to his wife Judith, by whom he had three daughters. He had inherited a love of music from his father and was an accomplished pianist. He was keen on sailing and was also an enthusiastic skier. After an earlier myocardial infarction he died suddenly on 31 July 1978, on his skis, while waiting for a chair lift in the Snowy Mountains, and was survived by his wife and daughters.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006762
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Sutherland, Hamilton D'arcy (1913 - 2008)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Andrew Sutherland
Publication Date 2014-11-25 2015-03-20
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006400-E006499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378619378619
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Hamilton D'Arcy Sutherland was born in Adelaide in 1913. His father, Alan, was killed in 1917 as a result of a flying accident while serving as a pilot officer in the Royal Flying Corps - predecessor to the Royal Air Force. D'Arcy's only sibling, Lance, joined the RAAF and died in a very similar accident practising aerobatics just before WW2. D'Arcy and his brother attended St Peter's College on a bursary for the sons of old scholars who had died on active service. The decision for D'Arcy to do medicine was made by the Head Master, Cannon Julian Bickersteth, and he attended the University of Adelaide on a Sir Samuel McCaughey Scholarship graduating MB BS in 1937. He was an excellent sportsman playing cricket in the St Peter's College First Eleven, earning University and Australian Blues in Baseball and he had a single figure golf handicap for over forty years (lowest 3). In 1938 he went to London to commence surgical training. He passed the Primary Examination of the Royal College of Surgeons six weeks after his arrival and World War 2 broke out a few months later. He immediately returned to Australia spending the next five years in the RANVR rising to the rank of Surgeon Lieut. Commander. During the War he served at various Military Hospitals and on ships including HMAS *Platypus* and HMAS *Australia*. He was on the *Platypus* when the Japanese bombed Darwin Harbour. He passed the Fellowship examination of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1944 and was also awarded a Master of Surgery (Adelaide). Because he was interested in the emerging specialty of Thoracic Surgery, much of which was based on new surgical and anaesthetic techniques developed during the war, he returned to London in 1947 on a Nuffield Dominion Travelling Fellowship. He had the good fortune to work at the Harefield Hospital under the doyen of British thoracic surgery Russell (later Lord) Brock. During this time he also achieved the Fellowship of the English College. On his return to Adelaide in 1949 he set up the new thoracic surgery unit largely under the auspices of the South Australian TB Service. The Unit was immediately busy dealing primarily with TB and other lung problems. By the mid 1950s they were doing closed cardiac surgery along with the other pioneering Australian teams. The first open heart operation was in 1960 and soon the unit had an enviable national and international reputation based on its outstanding results. D'Arcy Sutherland not only proved himself to be one of the outstanding surgeons of his generation but one of the first to understand the importance of surgical teams and the meticulous collection of data. He married Margaret Higgins in 1940 and they had three children Andrew, Elizabeth and Peter. Margaret died in 1977. Elizabeth pursued a career in public administration and Andrew and Peter both became surgeons - Andrew in Orthopaedics and Peter in Urology. D'Arcy was able to attend the Annual Scientific Congress in Christchurch in 2007 at the age of 93 when his son Andrew became College President - the first father/son combination to do so. During his professional career he presented numerous papers, addresses and reports and served on many State, National and International Committees. He was President of the Cardiac Society of ANZ from 1968 to 1970, President of the SA Division of the National Heart Foundation and Vice President of the National body from 1969 to 1977. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Surgeons in 1979 and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1980 for services to surgery. D'Arcy Sutherland was President of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1978/79 having been on the Council since 1967. He was Censor in Chief in 1974, Junior Vice President in 1975 and 1976 and Senior Vice President in 1977. The College was a major influence and commitment in his life. He was proud of his role as an Office Bearer at a time when surgical training was becoming more structured and better organised as a precursor to the present modern curriculum based specialty programmes. It has been said that D'Arcy retired several times. He finished as Director of the Cardiothoracic Unit at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in 1977 to take up the Directorship of the Cardiac Surgery Unit at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. He remained in Melbourne to 1980 and was instrumental in establishing the RCH unit as a world leader. On returning to Adelaide he was invited to be the Director of the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science from 1981 to 1983 and then Director of Outpatient Services at the Flinders Medical Centre for the next five years finally finishing paid employment at the age of 75. Following his final retirement he and Rosie who he married in 1980 established an excellent cool climate vineyard in the Adelaide Hills. D'Arcy will be remembered as a man determined to be the best at everything he attempted whether that was surgery, sport or viticulture. His dedication to his patients was legendary. Many of the patients who attended his Memorial Service were happy to recall his personal concern for them and often the pride that they felt in being one of the first to undergo a certain procedure. He was an outstanding leader and master surgeon of the immediate post war era when new technologies opened up opportunities especially in cardiothoracic surgery.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006436
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Hasan, Malik Shaukat (1919 - 2014)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Maryam Azmat Malik
Publication Date 2020-10-27
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009800-E009899
Occupation General surgeon Military surgeon Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Lieutenant General Malik Shaukat Hasan was director of surgery in the Pakistan Army and a pioneer of cardiothoracic surgery in his country. He was born on 12 May 1919 in Amritsar, India, the third son of a middle class Muslim cloth merchant; his paternal grandfather was from Kashmir and his maternal grandfather from Afghanistan. His father and two elder brothers continued in the family business but, being academically inclined, he chose medicine instead: he was the first in his family to go to university. He attended the prestigious King Edward Medical College in Lahore from 1936 to 1941, where he stood first amongst his Muslim classmates in his final year. After a house post in surgery at the Mayo Hospital, Lahore, he joined the British Indian Army in 1942 and faced the rigours of the Second World War at the Burmese Front. In 1947 he witnessed the horrors of the subcontinent’s Partition and mass migration, losing his father in the massacre. He finally found a prosperous haven in the newly created Pakistan as a military surgeon. He was selected for training abroad in the UK and, in 1950, won the Hallet prize at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, awarded to the candidate obtaining the highest marks in the first attempt at the primary FRCS examination. In 1951 he gained his FRCS and spent a further two years training in cardiothoracic surgery at Harefield Hospital, Middlesex. He then returned home and established the Pakistan Army’s first cardiothoracic unit in the old barracks at Rawalpindi Military Hospital, pioneering chest surgery in Pakistan. He set up an experimental theatre to practise procedures on stray animals before operating on humans. He had the distinction of becoming Pakistan’s first closed heart surgeon when he performed closed mitral valvotomies in the late 1950s. Celebrated as a titan in his field during his lifetime, not just for his indisputable professional expertise but also for the integral humanity, sincerity and humility that defined him, he treated all patients with the same meticulous care. He often asserted that he was a poor man’s doctor and was always willing to forego his fees for the improvident. Chest surgery was his special interest and forte, but his expertise extended to gastrointestinal, hepatobiliary, urogenital, vascular, orthopaedic, thyroid, breast, paediatric, plastic and reconstructive surgery. As a military surgeon, he was also adept at managing all levels of trauma. He passed on his skills to many sets of surgical trainees. A strong advocate of advancing postgraduate training facilities within the Pakistan Army, he was actively involved in the selection, training and supervision of the next generation of surgeons. He was an instructor in surgery at the Army Medical Corps School (which later became the Armed Forces Medical College) from 1953 until his retirement in 1979, with his students gaining distinction in their respective fields. As director of surgery, he enjoyed the privilege of heading many Army delegations on study tours abroad, particularly to the USA, UK and China, where they observed and benefited from the latest advancements. Deeply invested in advancing Pakistan’s medical institutions, he strove to optimise the specialist training of young doctors and promote budding talent. A founding member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan, established in 1962, he often served as a part II examiner in surgery for the College. He was also instrumental in the formation of the Fauji Foundation Medical Centre in 1958, serving as a consultant surgeon there from its inauguration to the end of his working life. One of his former students, Masud Ahmed Cheema, wrote: ‘…Lt Gen Malik Shaukat Hasan…had the most refined and delicate touch in surgery. Besides teaching us exemplary surgical craft, he willed us to embody a healing personality that combines courageous clinical decision making with profound empathy, compassion and respect towards patients.’ Surgery was his over-riding passion, but his interests were multidimensional. A voracious reader, he avidly consumed volumes of world, political and military history, classic and modern literature, biographies, philosophy, Urdu poetry and fairy tales for his kids. He loved movies, TV dramas, live sports, music, art, bridge, chess and travel. Strong and athletic, he enjoyed sports, including tennis, cricket, swimming, volleyball and trout fishing. Despite a tendency towards introspection, he was an ebullient society man and a loving family member. He married a doctor, Shamim Hasan, in 1959 and had six children, four of whom chose to study medicine. Intensely religious without making a public show of his piety or belief, he had a profound knowledge of the Quran. His calm and tolerant temperament was acquired after much reflection, self-discipline and perseverance. He espoused a code of truth and honesty above all, a standard he upheld throughout life. Malik Shaukat Hasan died on 31 May 2014 in Rawalpindi aged 95. His long life took in a rich spectrum of experiences – from growing up amidst the burgeoning Indian freedom movement, enjoying student days in the cultural vitality of historic Lahore, to witnessing the horrors of the subcontinent’s Partition and playing a pioneering role in the growth of his new homeland, Pakistan. His formidable intelligence, indomitable spirit and infinite learning capacity made him the man he was – thoughtful, focused, patient, compassionate and persevering. These qualities enabled him to garner many honours in his rise to the top of his profession as a military surgeon and spearhead a wave of surgical innovation that gained him universal renown.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009846
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Macarthur, Angus MacLeod (1921 - 2012)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by John Keates
Publication Date 2012-12-21 2014-01-22
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003300-E003399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375505375505
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Angus Macarthur was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at King's College Hospital, London. His life and career spanned vast changes in everyday life, the delivery of healthcare and the practice of surgery. He was born in Southampton on 3 January 1921. His father, Murdoch Macleod Macarthur, was brought up on Lewis in a seafaring community. He went to Glasgow and studied medicine for a year, but left to study marine engineering. He married Marion MacLeod Wyper, a staff nurse from Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and served in the Royal Navy during the First World War. Angus' older brother, Alastair, was born in 1917 and, after studying medicine at St Mary's in London, became a GP on the south coast. In 1923 the family emigrated to Southern Rhodesia to seek a more settled home life. Young Angus nearly did not complete the journey: he was scrambling halfway through an external porthole when his seven-year-old brother pulled him back. On reaching Southern Rhodesia, Angus attended Salisbury Catholic School. In 1929 his mother, who was much troubled with malaria, returned to England with the boys. Between 1930 and 1934 they attended Belmont School in Streatham, London, before returning to Southern Rhodesia. From 1934 to 1937, Angus attended the Prince Edward School in Salisbury, where he passed the matriculation exam. He returned to London and took his first MB exam at King's College. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Angus volunteered for the Royal Navy, but was told to complete his medical training. He initially went to Glasgow, but then joined King's College Hospital during the Blitz. He passed the conjoint examination in 1943 and served for six months at King's College Hospital as a house surgeon to Rear-Admiral Cecil Wakeley, whose surgical career extended back to the First World War. Angus then enrolled in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), serving two years as a surgeon lieutenant in a convoy destroyer, which included duties on the North Sea convoys to Russia. On one occasion he attended a seaman in a merchant ship who had caught his arm in a winch. The destroyer drew alongside, and he and his sick berth attendant were transferred by whaler across to the merchant ship, which was continuing in convoy. He anaesthetised the unfortunate seaman, amputated his arm, transfused one pint of blood and transferred him back to the destroyer, where the seaman continued his recovery. Angus was demobilised in 1946 and took his MB BS immediately. He continued his house appointments with six months of orthopaedic surgery, followed by a position as a registrar at the regional thoracic surgery unit, both at Horton Hospital in Epsom. This was a large wartime Emergency Medical Service hospital using the site of a London County asylum. In February 1948 he was appointed as a senior registrar at the Postgraduate Medical School of London at Hammersmith Hospital. He recalled his most influential trainers being Norman Barrett, Russell (Later Lord) Brock and Sir Clement Price Thomas. In January 1950, he was appointed as a consultant thoracic surgeon to the regional unit, south west region, based at St Helier Hospital, Carshalton. From 1950 to 1952 he held the Dorothy Temple Cross travelling scholarship from the Medical Research Council to attend the cardiothoracic unit at Ann Arbor Hospital in Michigan, USA, and other leading American cardiac centres. Back at home, he sometimes travelled widely to incidents of major trauma. On one occasion he was summoned from St Helier Hospital to Eastbourne, some 40 miles away, following a railway accident. A steam train had run into another train at the station and one passenger had suffered a crushing injury with a left haemothorax, rupture of the diaphragm and avulsion of the spleen, which was floating in the chest cavity. The patient recovered following prompt control of the bleeding and a massive blood transfusion. In 1953 he was invited to Waterford, Ireland, for three months to start thoracic surgery in a new hospital. Routine thoracic surgery in those days often involved dealing with complications of longstanding tuberculosis. His first case as a consultant was one such example. A patient with a calcified tuberculous empyema developed massive haemoptysis. An emergency right pleuropneumonectomy was performed. The patient recovered and wrote to Angus two weeks later whilst convalescing in hospital expressing gratitude, not only for his recovery but also for the calm manner in which the operation was explained to him. Angus' work as a peripatetic thoracic surgeon to the south west region continued until 1962, when he was appointed as a consultant thoracic surgeon to King's College Hospital to join Bill Cleland, who had taken part in the first studies of cardiopulmonary bypass at the Hammersmith Hospital in the 1950s. Angus noted in his application that he had experience in all branches of thoracic surgery excepting cardiopulmonary bypass. At that time open cardiothoracic operations at King's consisted mainly of procedures to correct atrial-septal defects using profound hypothermia. The operations were performed on Mondays, with post-operative recovery taking place in a small side ward over several days, with a registrar staying in the ward until the patient was stabilised. Initial results were sometimes disappointing but, with the development of a perfusion service, Angus' experience in open heart surgery grew and he took on extra sessions at the Brook Hospital at Shooter's Hill to accommodate an increasing supply of patients from two busy cardiac centres. Naturally he continued with his general thoracic practice, and was much admired for his immaculate and delicate technique, enabling him to perform a transthoracic oesophagectomy, for example, in 90 minutes without any appearance of haste, without blood transfusion and with the patient being able to start mobilising on the following day. In 1971 he led a team which carried out an early lung transplant, in a man with terminal pulmonary failure due to cryptogenic fibrosing alveolitis ('Lung transplantation in a patient with fibrosing alveolitis' *BMJ* 1971 3 391). The operation was carried out with the help of extra-corporeal oxygenation and was followed by immune-suppression. There was a dramatic improvement in pulmonary function and the patient mobilised to the point of being discharged. Sadly, however, the patient died suddenly eight weeks after the operation following a severe haemoptysis from a bronchopulmonary fistula secondary to infection. The conclusion was that further operations of this sort must await more sophisticated techniques of immunological suppression and dedicated funding. The increase in workload following the further development of the cardiology services at King's and the large increase in the surgical treatment for coronary artery disease led to the appointment of another full-time cardiothoracic surgeon. In 1979 Angus was invited to assist starting cardio-thoracic surgery in a new unit in Kuwait. At King's in those days all the cardiothoracic operations were still carried out in one small operating theatre with no air conditioning, which opened directly on to another theatre on the main corridors of the original King's College Hospital, built in 1903. Very soon it was working to full capacity, and it was frustrating when managerial constraints were placed on the number of operations undertaken. On one occasion, in 1980, Angus felt obliged to comment in a letter to the *Times* on the serious implications to patients on the waiting list when the number of proposed operations in the last financial quarter were reduced by 75%. Eventually these problems were overcome with new facilities and he continued an active surgical career until his retirement in 1983. Angus was an athletic man who rowed for London University until the onset of the war. He was a lifelong enthusiastic swimmer and enjoyed sailing in Germany before demobilisation. He walked a great deal in Scotland, France and Switzerland. Later he took up long-distance cross country walking, on one occasion walking 100 miles in 48 hours. He was a quiet, private man. In 1947 he married Hilary Claire Parton, also a doctor. They had two children - Janet MacLeod and Duncan MacLeod. After he married he moved with his wife into a new house at Epsom, where they lived for 65 years until his death. Angus and his wife enjoyed the arts and regularly visited central London for concerts and exhibitions. In later life, when he had become house-bound, he took up knitting blankets for charity, which he said satisfied his Scots instinct to re-use old wool and continued to keep his hands busy. He regarded himself as fortunate that, by chance, he was 'taken up' into thoracic surgery 'a specialty not widely practised nor fully understood', for which there was a huge demand due to widespread tuberculous disease and, when this demand reduced with the arrival of chemotherapy, it was replaced with the new challenge of cardiac surgery, which kept him active until his retirement. He wished to be remembered for teaching a series of general surgical registrars, for it was not until later in his career that he was involved in a structured thoracic training programme. Many of these registrars became general surgical consultants and valued their experience in the management of chest trauma, including stab wounds of the heart and oesophagus, which were not uncommon in the local area. Some of them changed course and went on to a career in cardiothoracic surgery. His assistants remember him as a true gentleman, always calm, polite and supportive. As a surgeon he was skilled, unhurried and careful. As a mentor he was greatly valued. He will be remembered with affection by all. He died on 22 October 2012 at the age of 91.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003322
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Dolton, Eric Granville (1914 - 1976)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-11-26
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006400-E006499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378642378642
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Born on 8 June 1914 in Cardiff, Eric Granville Dolton was educated at Acton County School and St Thomas's Hospital. He qualified with the Conjoint Diploma in January 1938 and was awarded the degree of MB BS London in May of the same year. He obtained FRCS in 1940. Having had a leg amputated he was not accepted for war service. After junior posts at St Thomas's he was resident assistant surgeon at that hospital from 1942 to 1945. He later held resident surgical officer posts at Brompton Hospital and Bristol Royal Infirmary before being appointed in 1946 to the staff of the Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton. He was Past President of the Midland Thoracic Society and had served on the Council of the Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons. In 1963 he was Chairman of the South Staffordshire Division of the British Medical Association. When Eric Dolton went to Wolverhampton the management of pulmonary tuberculosis made heavy demands on the small number of trained thoracic surgeons available, and his practice soon included hospitals and sanatoria scattered throughout Staffordshire, Shropshire, and Worcestershire. The bulk of his work in the early days was concerned with chronic pulmonary disease, but soon after his appointment his work on the repair and reconstruction of intrathoracic anomalies so impressed his paediatrician colleague that he was invited to take on the unofficial role of paediatric surgeon. This collaboration continued until his retirement. He contributed numerous papers to the *Lancet* and to *Archives of disease in childhood*. In 1949 he married Loma d'Abreu, a cousin of A L d'Abreu and F A d'Abreu, both Fellows of the College. When he was sixteen years old his left leg was amputated following a football injury and throughout his working life he required repeated surgical attention and was seldom free from pain or discomfort. His principal recreation was golf and for many years he played off a single figure handicap. His physical stamina and energy were matched by a cultivated aequanimitas and he would never allow himself any emotional indulgence that might impair the confidence of his theatre team. He faced the almost total disability of his last years with great courage and cheerfulness, reinforced by the devoted attention of his wife. He died on 5 May 1976.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006459
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Macedo, Manuel Machado (1922 - 2000)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008700-E008799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380936380936
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Manuel Macedo was Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery in Lisbon and an internationally respected thoracic surgeon. He was born in the Azores in 1922. He studied medicine at the medical school of Lisbon University, and graduated in 1946, after which he spent a year as honorary assistant to Löffler at the University of Zurich, before returning to Lisbon to do junior posts for the next four years. In 1952, he won a British Council scholarship, which took him to England, where he attended a course at the Brompton Hospital, and was taken under the wing of Sir Clement Price Thomas, who arranged for him to work at the Leicester Chest Unit under Gordon Cruickshank and Betty Slesser. During a period when Cruickshank was away in the United States, Macedo seized the opportunity to work with Phillip Allison in Leeds as a locum senior registrar in the absence of Alf Gunning, and visited A L d'Abreu and Jack Collis in Birmingham. At the end of his year in Leicester, he was invited to stay on as a senior house officer, with the actual duties of registrar. He gained considerable practical experience while he was in the UK, and on his return to Portugal in 1954 he passed a new competitive examination to become consultant in thoracic surgery at the City Hospitals in Lisbon. He was appointed in 1956. He began a programme of open heart surgery, eventually establishing two centres in the Lisbon area, becoming director of the department of thoracic surgery in 1969 and Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the New University of Lisbon in 1979, and at the University of Lisbon in 1985. He founded the Portuguese Society of Surgery, and the Portuguese Society of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery, of which he was the first President. In 1987, he was President of the Portuguese Medical Association. He kept up his contacts with his colleagues in the UK, and was made the first foreign member of the Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons. In 1986 he was President of the European Society for Cardiovascular Surgery, presiding over the congress in Brighton. He received many national and international honours. He was a member of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Belgium. He was a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur and Commandeur de l'Ordre du Mérite of France, and in Portugal was appointed a Great Official of the Order of Santiago and the Sword. He was made an honorary FRCS in 1990. He died in 2000.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008753
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Marchand, Paul Edmond (1920 - 2002)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008700-E008799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380943380943
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon Thoracic surgeon
Details Paul Marchand was born in Johannesburg on 19 November 1920. His father, Georges Edmond, was a Swiss watchmaker and jeweller who settled in South Africa in 1912. His mother, Guerra Pardini, was the daughter of Italian parents who had owned a hotel in Johannesburg since 1890. She was born in 1900 during the Boer war when Lord Roberts accepted the surrender of the town, hence her name ('Guerra' means 'war' in Italian). Paul was educated at King Edward VII School and the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, qualifying in 1944. He came to England to specialise in surgery, working first at Newcastle under T A Hindmarsh, and later at Guy's under Russell Brock from 1952 to 1954. He was invited to give the Moynihan lecture in Leeds in 1953, was the Nuffield dominion fellow for South Africa in 1953, and won the Moynihan medal in 1954 and the Jacksonian prize in 1956. He completed his training in cardiothoracic surgery at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. On his return to Johannesburg, he was appointed a consultant at Johannesburg Hospital, where he ultimately became chief of cardiothoracic surgery and head of the department of thoracic surgery. Paul was an associate founder of the College of Medicine of South Africa, and its convenor for cardiothoracic surgery from 1972 to 1993. He was President of the Cardiac Society of South Africa from 1968 to 1970 and Chairman of the Cardio-Thoracic Society from 1968 to 1992. He published more than 70 papers, including pioneer reports of mesothelioma. His career spanned virtually all the important milestones of cardiothoracic surgery, beginning at the stage of pulmonary resections for carcinoma, bronchiectasis etc, progressing through closed to open heart surgery. His first human by-pass operation was performed in 1958, and he carried out more than 1,000 afterwards. He was an avid South African military historian, particularly with regard to the Boer war. He was a keen fly fisherman and owned a trout farm on the Eastern Transvaal escarpment, to which he retired at weekends. A keen gardener, he loved Italian cooking, made his own gnocchi and grew his own artichokes and asparagus. He married Zoe Bisset, a descendant of an 1820 settler family. Her great grandfather General Sir John Bisset became Governor-General of Gibraltar. They had three sons and one daughter, two of whom entered medicine. He died on 9 July 2002.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008760
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Williams, Bryn Terence (1939 - 2018)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Michael M Webb-Peploe
Publication Date 2018-11-20 2018-11-21
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009500-E009599
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Bryn Terence Williams was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. He was born on 7 February 1939 in Halesowen, the son of George Frederick Williams and May Elizabeth Williams née Poole. He studied medicine at Birmingham University, qualifying in June 1962. After graduating, he received his surgical training in both London and Birmingham and spent a year on a Buswell scholarship as surgical research fellow at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In January 1974, he was appointed as a consultant at St Thomas’. He was the surgeon responsible for developing the coronary artery surgical programme at St Thomas’, and his meticulous attention to detail and the very high standards that he demanded both from himself and the team he worked with resulted in excellent operative and post-operative results. He gained a reputation (both at home and abroad) for being willing to take on difficult cases (complex revision and high risk), and for many years organised an overseas registrar training programme, which had the approval of the Royal College of Surgeons, providing advanced cardiac surgical training for one or two years for overseas trainees, who then returned to senior positions in their own countries. As part of this commitment to overseas training he arranged surgical teams to visit cardiac centres abroad in Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, India, Kenya and Kuwait, and on several occasions I accompanied him with a cardiac catheterisation laboratory team. Watching him at work in a strange environment, with colleagues that he had not worked with before, made me appreciate his patience, his talent for improvisation, and his ability to maintain high standards despite working conditions that were not always ideal. He was early to recognise the importance of handling the harvesting of saphenous veins for coronary artery grafting with great care to avoid damaging the vein and leg wounds which (particularly in elderly and diabetic patients or those with peripheral vascular disease) can take a long time to heal. An instrument (the Dimitri dissector), which allows the vein to be removed with minimum trauma to the leg, was developed under his direction. Other innovations developed during his time at St Thomas’ included the surgical strategy of allowing patients to be woken and taken off the ventilator immediately after their operation (‘fast tracking’). They were nursed overnight in a general surgical recovery area and returned to the ward the next morning, allowing earlier hospital discharge. Another innovation was the reduction in the need for blood transfusion. As a teenager, he had had a fascination with microbiology, hence his interest in microscopes (he had a collection of old microscopes) and his fellowship of the Royal Microscopical Society. He also had a great interest in Leica cameras, and the link between these two interests was probably the fine engineering involved in precision optical instruments. This interest in engineering explains his endeavours to improve the hardware associated with cardiac surgery, including the Williams-Barefoot electromagnetic flow probe, an extractable device which can be wrapped around an ascending aorta or bypass graft, allowing for continuous recording of blood flow in the aorta or graft in the post-operative period, a haemostatic cuff designed to control haemorrhage from suture lines in badly diseased vessels, and the left ventricular resectoscope, an instrument that facilitates left ventricular septal resection in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Bryn’s father went to work for the British Motor Corporation soon after it was formed, and got a significant discount on a new MGB car for Bryn. This (together with his fascination with precision engineering) may have been the beginning of his interest in vintage sports cars and his involvement in motor racing. As part of his promotion of safety on both road and track, he designed a thoracic protection jacket using surgical and anatomical considerations to minimise chest injuries in motorcycle accidents. Following his retirement as a cardiac surgeon, he moved from Weybridge to Oxfordshire with his wife Caroline (née Cheaser) and, together with his son Gareth (a trainee vascular surgeon), was able to devote more time to racing his stable of vintage sports cars. Over the years, he owned sports cars by Turner, MG, Alfa Romeo, Porsche, Lotus, Ferrari, Aston Martin, Bristol and Frazer Nash, and latterly with Gareth raced them all over the world. After moving to Blue Barn Farm, he also enjoyed farming in a shared farming agreement and had a licence to breed great crested newts. In 2017, he was diagnosed with cancer of the head of the pancreas. He underwent major surgery (Whipple’s procedure), but the operation did not succeed in prolonging his life by more than a few months. He died on 24 July 2018 at the age of 79 and was survived by Caroline (his wife of 40 years), his daughter Zara with her two children, and his son, Gareth.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009532
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Lawson, Robert Alexander Murdoch (1938 - 2017)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by A K Deiraniya
Publication Date 2017-02-17 2017-08-24
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/381494381494
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Robert Alexander Murdoch Lawson (known as 'Bob') was a cardiothoracic surgeon at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester. He was born on 11 February 1938, in a farmhouse in Ardross, a tiny village in Ross-shire in the Highlands of Scotland. His parents, Margaret Perrins Lawson née Murdoch and Robert MacKenzie Lawson, had settled in Ceylon after their marriage, but returned home to Scotland for the birth of their first child. After eight weeks, they returned to subcontinent, and the family continued with their happy life in Colombo until the imminent threat of a Japanese invasion forced the evacuation of British women and children to South Africa for a couple of years. On their return to Colombo, Bob's father became ill with lung cancer and died on New Year's Day, 1945. With no financial support abroad, Bob's mother wisely decided to return to the safety and comfort of the family farm in Ardross. There Bob went to the local primary school, where he excelled, mainly, he would say, because there were only three in his class. From there he went to George Watson's College in Edinburgh, where he boarded for six years. Bob was forever indebted to the Scottish educational system for this and for the following six years at the Edinburgh University Medical School. After three house jobs in Scotland, Bob went to Sarawak for six months, where he had 'wonderful experience in surgery, medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology too, and life itself'. On his return to Scotland, he held senior house officer posts in the accident and emergency department at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and in anaesthesia at the Western General Hospital. This was followed by four years in general surgery at Bangour General Hospital, at the end of which a career move to cardiothoracic surgery saw him move south of the border to Shotley Bridge Hospital in County Durham. He spent 1972 and 1973 as a registrar at the Brompton Hospital. This was followed by a two-year fellowship with Albert Starr in Portland, Oregon, after which he returned to the UK to complete the last two years of his senior registrar training on the London Chest/ Brompton/National Heart circuit. He was appointed as a consultant at Wythenshawe Hospital in south Manchester and at Pendlebury Children's Hospital, Manchester in 1977. Bob was a caring, compassionate, committed and conscientious clinician; he saw his patients twice a day and at weekends throughout the year without fail. In addition to his work at Wynthenshawe Hospital, he shouldered a significant paediatric surgical workload at Pendlebury. This was an onerous undertaking considering the emergency component of that type of surgery and the travel involved. Bob was available 24/7 for his patients. He was an excellent clinician, a skillful operator and a gifted teacher, who contributed a great deal to developing cardiac surgical services. He was highly regarded and universally respected by his fellow consultants, nursing colleagues, trainees and patients alike. Many of his patients became lifelong friends. He retired from Wythenshawe in 1998, but continued at Pendlebury for three more years. He met and married Liz (Elizabeth Ettie Clark) in 1965 when she was a staff nurse on the paediatric ward of the Western General Hospital, where they both worked at the time. They went on to have five children and nine grandchildren. On retirement, the Lawsons moved to Blackburn, where Bob was able to indulge his passion of walking in the hills of Pendle. His enjoyment of hill walking was severely curtailed in recent years with the onset of a spinal disorder. He loved reading poetry and watching Scotland play rugby. For a number of years, he had a love affair with low slung sports cars. Despite bilateral hip replacements at the tender age of 45 or thereabouts, he could get in and out of his TVR and Lotus Elan cars with amazing agility and grace. When he could no longer manage the graceful entry and exit, he settled for a Skoda Superb. He travelled a great deal over the years with Liz and sometimes with his large family. Europe-wise, he loved Greece the best. Bob was a true Scot, proud to be so and loved everything Scottish, particularly the Highlands and the north west. His death came unexpectedly two weeks after admission to Blackburn Royal Infirmary on Christmas Day with an acute pneumonia. Bob was a loyal friend and an exemplary colleague of unimpeachable integrity; throughout the 40 years I knew him he displayed malice towards none and charity to all. He died on 10 January 2017, aged 78. He will be greatly missed and lovingly remembered by all those whose lives he touched, none more so than his wife Liz, children (Becky, Kate, Libby, Tom and Hannah) and his nine grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009311
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Mynors, John Malbon (1921 - 1979)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-02-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006800-E006899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378987378987
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon General surgeon Vascular surgeon
Details John Malbon Mynors was born at Birmingham on 1 September 1921, and educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Birmingham. In 1943 he graduated with distinction from Birmingham Medical School, prepared for a life of practical Christian service by Crusader leadership. After resident surgical and obstetric appointments he became temporary Surgeon-Lieutenant, RNVR, and saw active service in destroyers before the end of the second world war. After several resident appointments he took the FRCS in 1953 and practised in the Sudan, becoming senior lecturer in surgery at the University College of Khartoum. While there his interest was kindled in the need for medical training in developing countries, and he returned to England in 1956 resolved to prepare himself to be a teacher of surgery. During his postgraduate training at Birmingham and Oxford he developed a special interest in cardiothoracic and vascular surgery. His thesis on the clinical significance of the bowel sounds led to the award of the ChM by Birmingham University in 1964. He held the distinction of being the first occupant of the Chair of Surgery at two different medical schools. In 1963, under the auspices of the British Council, he was appointed Professor of Surgery in the Mosul Medical College of the University of Baghdad. In 1966 he was appointed Professor of Surgery in the new medical school of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The stream of graduates of a very high standard and those who have attained FRCS owe their success mainly to him. He endowed a prize for anatomy in this medical school, and was an examiner for the Primary FRCS in South Africa. In 1972 he became consultant surgeon to the Hospital of St Cross at Rugby and to Gulson Hospital, Coventry, and initiated and maintained the teaching of anatomy at Coventry to students taking the Primary FRCS examination. John Mynors applied the faith of a committed Christian to his work. He was kind and gentle, with a quiet sense of humour, intolerant with those who would compromise the high standards he set. Patients and students loved him and medical and nursing staff recall with affection his approachability, patience and loyalty. As a surgeon and a man he has left his mark in three continents. He rescued four steam locomotives from the scrapyard and was an active member of the Great Western Society and the Caerphilly Railway Society. He planted many trees in his corner of Warwickshire to replace those destroyed by Dutch elm disease. He married Una Williams in 1947, they had two daughters and one son. He died suddenly on 31 March 1979, aged 57 years.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006804
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Da Silva, Luis Tavares ( - 1994)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

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/380074380074
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Born at Recife in Brazil, Da Silva, the son of distinguished general surgeon Arsenio Tavares da Silva, qualified at the University of São Paulo Medical School in 1940 and in 1945 carried out experimental work leading to renewed interest in the surgical treatment of schistosomiasis and the surgery of portal hypertension, carrying on a considerable correspondence with Sir Philip Manson-Bahr. Da Silva first came to the United Kingdom on a British Council scholarship in 1950. His interest was directed to the newly emerging specialty of cardiothoracic surgery and he went to Leeds to work with Mr Philip Allison. This was clearly a most productive time in his clinical training and instead of staying for four months, as had been his intention, it was two years before he returned to Brazil. During this time he was able to visit Sir Clement Price Thomas and Lord Brock at the Brompton Hospital and observed the former carrying out lung resections and the latter pulmonary valvotomy. His work at Leeds led to the submission of a thesis on the measurement of left atrial pressure in man. He returned to Brazil in 1952 and started the first cardiothoracic unit in Recife, undertaking such operations as closed mitral valvotomy, resection of coarctation of the aorta and closure of persistent ductus arteriosus. In 1956 he published a monograph on the surgical treatment of hiatus hernia. The following year he became professor of surgery at the University of Pernambuco and established a proper cardiac catheterisation laboratory. In 1960 he was the first person in that part of Brazil to undertake open heart operations using cardio-pulmonary bypass, well ahead of many of his contemporaries working in more favourable professional surroundings. His energy and enthusiasm ensured that this work continued and there are now three teams operating in Recife, performing all types of cardiac and thoracic surgery. Da Silva was a great anglophile, and estimated that he visited Britain on at least forty different occasions. Under his guidance many undergraduate and postgraduate students carried out periods of training in universities in the United Kingdom but particularly in Leeds, Oxford and London. Students from the University of Pernambuco were also seconded to the Universities of Oxford and London for periods of study. Da Silva was an accomplished artist, both in water-colours and oils. He was chess champion of Brazil on two occasions, and a past president of the Brazil Chess Federation. For many years he regularly attended the annual Hastings Chess Tournament. His passion for chess is perhaps best exemplified by an occasion when he was returning by air to Recife from São Paulo. He happened to start a game with a fellow traveller and became so oblivious to all extraneous events that he finally ended up 800 miles north of his planned destination! Da Silva died on 27 June 1994.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007891
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Slesser, Elizabeth Vivien (1918 - 2010)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by N Alan Green
Publication Date 2011-06-09
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001200-E001299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373428373428
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Elizabeth Vivien Slesser, known as 'Betty', worked as a surgeon in Leicester from 1951 to 1978 and expanded the cardio-thoracic unit at Groby Road Hospital. She had an interesting life at a time when women in surgery had to fight hard to be recognised, and later lectured on this topic at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. She was born in India on 23 August 1918, the elder daughter of William Slesser, a military policeman, and Alice née Hardy, who was a graduate of Aberdeen University. Betty's sister, Margaret Phillip, died in her early twenties but had a son who lives in Thunder Bay, Canada. Her brother, Malcolm, a professor of energy studies at Strathclyde University, had two children, Morag and Calum. Morag Slesser, Betty's niece, is a clinical psychologist. Qualifying from Edinburgh University in 1941, Betty obtained a house surgeon post in the ear, nose and throat department at the Royal Infirmary and worked with Ewart Martin. In those days it was most unusual for female doctors to get junior house jobs in general surgery and medicine in Edinburgh, and most had to apply to the specialist departments, such as eyes, skin and VD. One exception among her contemporaries was Dame Sheila Sherlock, who won the Ettes scholarship, got general house appointments, and later became the first woman professor of medicine in England at the Royal Free Hospital, London. In March 1942, Betty applied for a post as house surgeon to the Prince of Wales Hospital, Greenbank, Plymouth. The town had been heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe and she wished to contribute to the war effort. The interviews took place during heavy snowfall that prevented her from travelling. She sent a telegram to this effect, but received one in return indicating that she had been appointed. She gained valuable experience at this busy general hospital in emergency work, including many casualties from 'hit and run raids'. The following year Betty was made resident surgical officer to the Prince of Wales Hospital in Devonport, a smaller hospital with fewer junior staff, but gained good clinical experience. The medical registrar gave anaesthetics for emergencies, and on one occasion held up a copy of *Romanis and Mitchiner*, which gave Betty the confidence she needed to operate on an empyema of the gallbladder, found instead of the acutely inflamed appendix she had initially diagnosed. Of her early experiences she wrote at a later date: "We worked extremely long hours, including Saturdays and Sundays, without feeling tired or badly done by. To us it was all valuable experience. My salary was £100 per year plus board and room. Initially I had one half day off a week, 3pm to 10pm, covered by the junior consultant, but when I got back I found all the emergencies from the late afternoon onwards had piled up and were awaiting me: I soon gave up my half day!" In 1943, feeling she should do more for the war effort, she was interviewed and accepted for the Royal Air Force medical service. This decision was reversed by the central committee who controlled all civilian hospital appointments. Betty was told that the RAF did not need more women doctors and she should find another surgical post. Unsuccessful in many applications to hospitals along the south coast, in desperation she applied for a job at a miners convalescent home near Sheffield. The interviews were held at the Royal Infirmary and Betty was pleasantly surprised to be offered a post as first assistant there to the surgical professorial unit with Sir Ernest Finch, doyen of surgery in the city at the time. Like many cities less vulnerable to German bombing, Sheffield received its fair share of second front service casualties who had received emergency treatment in field hospitals and hospitals on the south coast of England. The junior consultant, Alan Fawcett, a good general surgeon with superb technical ability, was developing an interest in thoracic surgery and passed his enthusiasm on to Betty Slesser as she helped him with his early thoracic operations, many performed under local anaesthesia. Clearly destined for a career in surgery, she sat and passed the Edinburgh FRCS in January 1945. Rather than attempt to obtain a post in a teaching hospital with many men returning from war service, she returned to the West Country as a surgical registrar. By September 1946 Alan Fawcett was specialising entirely in thoracic surgery and offered Betty a senior registrar post in Sheffield at the Royal Infirmary. She also worked with J T Chesterman at the Northern General Hospital. He was a pioneer in open heart surgery and the development of the heart lung machine. The workload in Sheffield was enormous, but Betty developed her interest in surgery of the oesophagus. In August 1951 she was appointed consultant surgeon to the thoracic unit in Leicester, based at the old tuberculosis and isolation hospital, a unit was started before the Second World War by Sir Thomas Holmes Sellors and expanded by her senior colleague, Gordon Cruickshank. On achieving regional status, the name was changed to Groby Road Hospital. Betty knew she was not the favoured candidate and had to overcome this obstacle with the Leicester consultant staff. She recalled one amusing episode whilst waiting for the interview. Females were expected to wear hats for these formal occasions. Her chief, Mr Fawcett, who was on the interviewing committee, made a remark likely to depress any lady before experiencing the ordeal: "Where did you get that bloody awful hat?" In addition to her work in Leicestershire, Betty had to look after south Derbyshire. Initially 50 per cent of the work was in the surgery of pulmonary tuberculosis, bronchiectasis and lung cancer, but she also engaged in oesophageal surgery. It was necessary to travel many miles at all hours to cope with chest injuries in Derby. Cardiac surgery on the unit expanded from closed mitral valvotomy and correction of congenital abnormalities, to closure of septal defects under hypothermia. During the period when cardio-pulmonary bypass was in its infancy in the UK, her senior colleague died at the age of 47. The setting up of an open-heart unit was discussed at regional level for some 10 months, and no replacement was made for her colleague. Any senior registrar acting as a locum would expect to obtain the definitive post, so Betty Slesser decided to work on her own until the correct decision could be made at regional level. In order to keep her waiting list down, some patients were transferred to Harefield hospital and a general surgeon shared the oesophageal workload in Leicester. In 1965 Philip Slade was appointed, trained in the techniques of cardio-pulmonary by-pass by Sir Russell Brock and Oswald Tubbs: a cardiologist and cardiac radiologist were also appointed in order to provide better overall care for patients. Slade trained the existing staff in Leicester, including Betty Slesser, in the various techniques, and she was then able to take her fair share of the cardiac workload. Pulmonary work continued as the expertise in coronary surgery was developed in the area. Morale in the operating theatres during these long procedures and in intensive care units was essential, and Betty gave much of the necessary support. She was a prominent and much respected member of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the local Leicester Medical Society. Her major contribution over many years was recognised in 1974 when Betty was awarded the FRCS of our College *ad eundem* by the president, Sir Thomas Holmes Sellors. In her later years Betty married John Chatterton, clerk to the County Council of Leicester, and inherited two children, Jill and James. She and her husband were mutually supportive and in 1978 Betty decided to retire at the age of 60 so that she could spend more time with her husband who had retired four years previously. She felt he was having a raw deal, meals at all hours and little companionship, and she herself was getting a little tired of late night calls and the daily stress, admitting she had enjoyed her working life enormously. Betty spent two happy and peaceful years with John before he died in 1980 at their home in Rothley, Leicestershire. She had many interests outside medicine including fly fishing and walking in the Highlands. She was a great traveller, particularly after retirement, and went on many cruises with friends. On her husband's death she was befriended by Frank Doleman, a Leicester GP. Although they never shared a home, they continued to live near each other for 12 years until Frank died at the age of 92. She moved back to Scotland at the turn of the century to spend her remaining years in Netherbridge. She and John had a retreat there for many years and after he died she sold this and moved to 'Dornie', Netherbridge. Betty Slesser died peacefully on 13 February 2010 at her home at the age of 91. She is survived by her two step-children, Jill and James, and is much missed by a close-knit family.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001245
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

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

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

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 Borrie, John (1915 - 2006)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2016-02-19 2016-02-22
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/381235381235
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details John Borrie was born and bred in Otago. In his formative years he excelled academically as well as on the sports field representing his college at cross-country running. He elected to follow in his father's footsteps and went on to Otago University to study medicine, graduating in 1938. During his training he received the Bachelor Medal for obstetrics and gynaecology. He worked as a house surgeon at Dunedin Hospital until September 1939 when he was sent to the Middle East as a captain in the New Zealand Army Medical Corps. In 1941, whilst stationed in Greece he was captured by the Germans and, after nearly a month of being transported with other POW's in railway wagons northwest into central Europe, spent more than four years as a POW camp doctor. Through much adversity he learnt to improvise and make do, often challenging the Germans until he got a satisfactory resolution. It was during this period of incarceration that he studied for the Part 1 surgical examination and on his release to London he was able to sit and pass in the shortest possible time, progressing on to the Part 2 exam in May 1946. At this time he was also awarded an MBE for distinguished service to Allied POW's during the war as well as a 1939-45 Star, Africa Star and New Zealand War Service Medal. He returned to NZ in 1953 and within a year had set up the Southern Regional Thoracic Surgery Unit in Dunedin, providing clinics for both Central Otago and Southland. He became senior lecturer then later associate professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Otago University. In 1957 he organised the first formal New Zealand course for candidates for a specialist college exam - a series of tutorials spread over several weeks for Dunedin doctors preparing for the Primary (later Part 1) FRACS. The small informal organisation catering for a handful of local postgraduate students evolved into today's charitable trust employing office staff and over 30 tutors, and catering for 80 to 90 Trainees each year in a full-time course of 5 weeks' duration. Over the years it has attracted well over 2000 New Zealand and Australian surgical Trainees. Sadly John Borrie died a few weeks short of the completion of its 50th year. His contribution to the Otago Medical School and to Dunedin Hospital is noted as having been many and varied. The Southern Regional Thoracic Surgical Unit which he founded expanded and he played a major role in the Unit's immaculate record system, its reputation for clinical research and its key role in the teaching of surgery to undergraduates. Teaching itself was seen as his great love. In addition to his clinical roles he was secretary of the Postgraduate Committee of the Faculty of Medicine from 1954-1976 and helped to establish the NZ Postgraduate Medical Federation to which he was Secretary in the early 1960s. In 1974 he was a moving force behind the establishment of the Alumnus Association of the Otago University Medical School becoming its first President. On his retirement from the Otago Medical School and the Otago Hospital in 1980 he was made the faculty of medicine's honorary curator of historic medical artefacts. The display was later named the John Borrie History Hall. He received many honours during his career including the 1947-48 Nuffield Fellow in Thoracic Surgery, in 1951 the Royal College of Surgeons Hunterian Professor and in 1953 the Royal College of Surgeons Jacksonian Prize for his research into carcinoma of the stomach. He was the Rockefeller Fellow in Thoracic and Heart Surgery in 1960 and was awarded the Jacksonian medal from the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1972 and the RACS medal in 1977 for distinguished service to postgraduate education. He published over 120 papers on clinical and research topics within Medicine and Surgery, wrote 12 historical and cultural articles in general journals and published 5 books. His booklet *Hints to Graduates Studying Abroad* ran to 17 editions. This was first published when overseas travel (usually by sea) was more of a novelty than it is today; and it contained information not only on organising one's departure from New Zealand and gaining medical registration overseas, but also on assorted exotica (at least for kiwis) like cheap accommodation in Italy, coping with primitive toilet arrangements in Eastern Europe, and avoiding expensive hairdressers in the West End of London. John Borrie is survived by his wife of 57 years, Helen, and their two sons, Professor Michael Borrie (Canada) and Dr Philip Borrie, and daughter Louise Borrie. (The above is compiled from an obituary in the *Otago Daily Times* written by John Heslop and a copy of the address given at the time of his retirement from the Dunedin Hospital)
Resource Identifier RCS: E009052
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Yacoub, Ahmed Abdel Aziz (1931 - 2013)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by T A Elhadd
Publication Date 2013-07-24 2013-11-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004200-E004299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376464376464
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Ahmed Abdel Aziz Yacoub, widely known as Ahmed Abdel Aziz, was a pioneering Sudanese cardiothoracic surgeon. A charismatic leader and gifted teacher, he was a staunch advocate of training in surgery in the Sudan. He was born in Gubbat Salim, Abri, in northern Sudan on 12 January 1931. His father was a civil servant who was employed in the customs department. Ahmed was the second eldest son from a family of three brothers and one sister. He received his primary education at Port Sudan, Sudan's second city, and in 1946 he was part of the first cohort of pupils to be enrolled at Wadi Saynda Secondary School, one of the first schools established by the British in the 1940s based on the Eton and Harrow model. In 1950, Ahmed was accepted into the Kitchener School of Medicine (it became the University College Khartoum in December 1953), obtaining the college prize in his first year. He had a very distinguished undergraduate career, obtaining several prizes, including Jackson's prize in pathology, the Waterfield prize in public health, and the Archibald prize in community medicine. He graduated with a distinction and a prize in surgery in April 1956 (by then the University College Khartoum was renamed the faculty of medicine, Khartoum University). As a student and surgical trainee, Ahmed Abdel Aziz was mentored by B Hickey, the first professor of surgery at Khartoum and, following his graduation, he was trained at Khartoum by William MacGowan, senior lecturer to the faculty of medicine and senior surgeon to the health services. Later on, the two became close friends. William MacGowan was the first to perform a cardiac catheterisation at Khartoum Hospital in 1957, and the first to have performed cardiothoracic surgery there. It was probably MacGowan who encouraged Ahmed's love of cardiothoracic surgery, which was by then an evolving specialty. Julian Taylor, who succeeded Hickey at Khartoum, was very passionate about the training of young Sudanese surgeons, an enterprise Ahmed would eventually successfully take on. Through the guidance and encouragement of his mentor Julian Taylor, Ahmed was posted to the UK, where his surgical career blossomed. In January 1960 he was appointed as a surgical registrar and lecturer in the department of surgery at University College Hospital, London. He obtained his FRCS from the Edinburgh College in January 1961, and from the English College in May of the same year. His early success in obtaining these fellowships paved the way for many other young Sudanese doctors to follow suit. Ahmed returned to Khartoum in January 1962 and spent one year at Khartoum Hospital. He then returned to the UK, where he trained in cardiothoracic surgery in Birmingham with the most distinguished professor of cardiothoracic surgery of that era, Alphonso Liguori d'Abreu. Ahmed then spent the following year with Andrew Logan at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. During this later spell he decided to sit the membership examination (cardiology) of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, the first Sudanese doctor to combine surgical and medical postgraduate qualifications in this way. On returning to Khartoum in 1965, Ahmed was appointed chief surgeon at the cardiothoracic section at Khartoum, and he retained this post until 1983. Ahmed's quest for excellence in cardiothoracic surgery took him to yet another guru: in 1965 he crossed the Atlantic to visit Michael DeBakey (and also Denton Cooley) at Houston, Texas. In 1974 Ahmed obtained an MSc in surgery from his old university at Khartoum, and in 1972 he was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. In 1976 he was awarded the fellowship of the American College of Surgeons. In that same year, Ahmed Abdel Aziz began to set the platform for open heart surgery in Khartoum. He first performed around 40 operations on animals jointly with Christopher Lincoln (of the Royal Brompton Hospital) and Salal Umbabi (of the faculty of veterinary medicine at Khartoum University). From 1979 through to 1981, open heart surgery operations were carried out on human patients with input from Sir Magdi Yacoub and Donald Ross. Over 20 operations were performed without a single mortality. From the 1970s, Ahmed Abdel Aziz encouraged and supported the training of scores of young Sudanese surgeons in Europe and beyond, an enterprise he executed with zeal and perfection. He used his extensive network of previous colleagues, mentors and friends to obtain paid training posts, in UK and Ireland in particular. His earlier links with Bill MacGowan proved to be the backbone of this enterprise. And it was not just doctors who were trained: nurses and technicians were also needed in various surgical subspecialties. Many of these doctors and other medical staff are now scattered in every area of Sudan, and also in the Middle East region and beyond. Ahmed's indefatigable energy and passion was not confined to medicine. He was an excellent administrator. He took responsibility for running the hospital where he trained and he excelled. Khartoum Teaching Hospital in the 1970s became an expanding empire, with almost every specialty represented and, from 1976 to 1983, he was its director. His tenure witnessed one of the best periods for service and education in the country. From 1989 to 1995 he was president of the Sudan Medical Council. He also served his country as minister of sport and, in 1984, he was summoned by Colonel Numeri to help rejuvenate the Army medical corps. Ahmed took up the challenge and his efforts transformed the service. He was also interested in the law. At the peak of his surgical career he joined the two faculties of law in Khartoum. First, he enrolled at the University of Cairo, Khartoum campus, where he obtained a licentiate in law in 1986. In 1995 he went on to enrol at the faculty of law, Khartoum University, and obtain a diploma in Sharia law. In the following year he gained an MSc in law from the same faculty. He then registered at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he was awarded a doctorate in July 2000 for a thesis on 'Responses in Islamic jurisprudence to developments in medical sciences'. The thesis was soon published as a book, *The fiqh of medicine* (London, Ta-Ha, 2001), and was later translated into Arabic. Ahmed kept up his work in education and training past retirement age. He joined the newly established faculty of medicine at the Islamic University, Omdurman, where he founded the academic department of surgery. He was awarded a personal chair there. He maintained this post until shortly before his death. Ahmed Abdel Aziz' last years were hampered by the frustrations of Parkinson's disease. Despite the progressive nature of this terrible and disabling condition, he retained his spirit and his mental strength. He died on 26 April 2013 during a visit to London, following a short illness with many complications. He was 82. He was survived by his wife Sayida Al-Dardiry Mohamed Ahmed Nugud, an eminent obstetrician, whom he married in 1960, two daughters and a son. His eldest daughter, Sarah, trained as an ophthalmologist. His son, Khalid, is a surgeon and is on the staff of the faculty of medicine at Khartoum University. His youngest daughter, Azza, has a PhD in socio-medical anthropology at London University. Ahmed Abdel Aziz will leave a long-lasting legacy.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004281
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Hill, Ian Macdonald (1919 - 2007)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2008-09-11 2008-10-24
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/372741372741
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Ian Hill was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. He was born on 8 June 1919. When he was only five he developed diphtheria and was admitted to an isolation hospital for many weeks. There he was allowed no visits from his family and witnessed at close quarters the frequently unsuccessful attempts of surgeons to save the lives of other children with that terrible disease. This dreadful experience gave him the emotional drive to overcome disease and save lives, although later he maintained that he went into medicine because it was his father Tom’s own unfulfilled wish: indeed their house in Palmers Green was chosen to be near the railway that would eventually take him to Bart’s. His mother Annie was a gifted teacher and helped him with his homework, passing on to him the skills of patient and supportive clarity he used in his own teaching. He was educated at the Stationers’ Company School and St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he had a brilliant career as a student, qualifying with honours in 1942. He was house surgeon to (later Sir) James Paterson Ross, whose testimonial stated “his academic record has been one of rapid and uninterrupted success, winning most for the prizes for which he was eligible. He is honourable, forthright, diligent and utterly trustworthy. He absorbs knowledge readily and applies theory to practice with good judgement and effect. He is a skilful, safe, and resourceful operator who can win the confidence of his patients, his colleagues and his students”. After serving as a demonstrator of anatomy he married Agnes Paice in 1944, having met her when both their hospitals had been evacuated. He joined the RAF medical branch in 1945 and was wing commander in command of the surgical division of No 1 RAF Hospital. He then specialized in cardiothoracic surgery, becoming senior registrar to Russell Brock at Guy’s Hospital in 1947, where he carried out experimental work on cardiopulmonary bypass and became surgical chief assistant at the Brompton Hospital. He returned to St Bartholomew’s as consultant surgeon in 1950 at the early age of 31, as second in command to Oswald Tubbs, where he continued to build up its cardiothoracic unit. He was a skilled operator who had ‘green fingers’. He was often described by his junior staff as a one-man band, for, apart from his operative ability he typed his own operation notes and wrote summaries of the patient after each operation. Surprisingly these records were never analysed and sadly they were destroyed after his death: they would have made a fascinating contribution to cardiothoracic archive material. He cared deeply about the training of his young doctors and for eight years served as sub-dean of the medical college (from 1964 to 1972). He was prodigiously well organised, kept meticulous records and was obsessed by time. He was both scrupulously logical and persistent in trying to solve problems. For several years he owned a vintage Rolls Royce car, which he maintained himself, having taken a course on its maintenance. When his junior staff telephoned his home for advice they were frequently told by his wife “I’ll get him from under his car!” Ian’s 40 years as a consultant surgeon were a period of explosive development in cardiothoracic surgery, but despite his brilliant mind and ability he wrote very little, and he made no definitive contribution to his specialty. He had a poor relationship with Oswald Tubbs, his senior consultant, who was disappointed in his subsequent career and thought that he had not fulfilled the potential implied in Ross’s glowing testimonial. He was a cutting surgeon rather than a writing surgeon and was, as many have said, an enigma. After he retired he continued to serve on the board of governors of St Bartholomew’s. Ian retired with Agnes to Fernham in 1984, where he lived the life he had always dreamed of in the countryside, creating his garden, running a prodigiously productive allotment, and indulging his fascination for fine engineering, old clocks, the fine arts, good food and wine. He upset his allotment neighbours by giving away much of his produce in competition to the many who sold for profit. Despite being an agnostic, he served as clerk to the parish council. Predeceased by his wife, he died on 22 September 2007 leaving three sons and a daughter, Alison, who is a general practitioner in London.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000558
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Williams, William Gilbert (1928 - 2002)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-12-08 2015-12-16
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/381180381180
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details William Williams was a consultant surgeon in Coventry. He was born in Newport, Gwent, on 11 May 1928. His father, William George, was an engine driver. His mother was Lillian Hyacinth Maud née Jones, a farmer's daughter. He was educated at Newport High School and Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge, going on to Bristol for his clinical studies, winning the surgical anatomy prize. After junior posts at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, he did his National Service in the RAF. He then did registrar posts at the Westminster and St George's Hospitals, before starting his training in cardiothoracic surgery at the Brompton and London Chest Hospitals under Lord Brock and Sir T Holmes Sellors. He was appointed consultant cardiothoracic surgeon to the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, Warwick, in 1967, and moved with his department to Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, in 1970. Here he had a pivotal role in the development of by-pass surgery for the area, appropriately for a Welshman, doing the first operation on St David's Day. He made a major contribution to a series of successful Coventry conferences on cardiothoracic topics. He was an examiner for the College, was secretary of the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons and adviser in surgery to the chief medical officer at the Department of Health. He married in 1954 Phyllis Mary Jones, a nurse. They had three children, Huw, Richard and Sian, who did not enter medicine. There are five grandchildren - Gareth, Ben, Leon, Max and Coco. After his retirement he had ten years enjoying reading, music, good food and wine. He underwent two operations for carcinoma of the colon, but developed metastases and died in hospital on 12 May 2002. See below for an amended version of the published obituary: Bill Williams was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry. He was born on 11 May 1928 in Newport, Gwent. He studied medicine at King's College, Cambridge, and then Bristol, qualifying MB Bchir in 1952. He carried out his National Service in the Royal Air Force, where he served on flying stations. He then joined the Westminster Hospital as a surgical registrar, passing his FRCS in 1959. A year later he gained his Mchir. He then undertook further training in cardiothoracic surgery at the London Chest and Brompton hospitals. In 1967 he was appointed as a consultant to the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, Warwick, moving with the department to the newly-opened Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, in 1970. He played a decisive role in the development of coronary bypass graft surgery for the area, carrying out the first operation on St David's Day - appropriately for a Welshman. He was honorary secretary to the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons, and during this time co-wrote a paper published in the *British Medical Journal* which analysed trends in the incidence of mortality in cardiac surgery and regional workload in the United Kingdom ('The UK cardiac surgical register, 1977-82' *Br Med J (Clin Res Ed)* 1984 289 1205). This provided an important source of information on trends within the specialty, and the authors suggested other surgical specialities might follow their example. This has indeed happened, and since November 2014 surgeon-specific mortality data is, compulsorily, available. He was a member of the Court of Examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and examined at home and abroad, including the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He was an excellent examiner. It was without exception an excellent experience to sit with him; his comments were always shrewd, but not unkind. Following his period on the Court, he examined for the General Medical Council's Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board (PLAB), and assisted in the preparation of good, searching questions. He was also an adviser in the specialty to the Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health. Despite illness, he enjoyed his retirement, which gave him time for his hobbies of reading, particularly military history, music and good food and wine. It was fitting that at his retirement from the Court of Examiners the dinner was held at the Honourable Artillery Company, attended by the president of the Royal College of Surgeons and the members of the Court. He died on 12 May 2002, following surgery for metastases from colon cancer. He was 74. He was survived by his wife Phyllis, three children and five grandchildren. Norman Kirby
Resource Identifier RCS: E008997
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Robb, Sir George Douglas (1899 - 1974)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-03-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006800-E006899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379074379074
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon General surgeon
Details George Douglas Robb was born in Auckland on 29 April 1899 and educated at Auckland Grammar School, and Auckland University College and Otago University, graduating BSc and MB ChB in 1922. The following year he went to England and worked for his Fellowship in the company of three other pioneer thoracic surgeons, H P Nelson, Sir Thomas Holmes Sellors and M P Susman. He was dogged by recurrent bouts of pulmonary tuberculosis, a disease which affected his father and killed his older brother. He interrupted his training to make a trip as a ship's surgeon to South Africa, partly to give his health a respite. Having gained the FRCS he worked in Ipswich and there developed an interest in the surgery of varicose veins, large bowel and rectum. In 1928 he returned to New Zealand and became one of the first specialists to confine himself to consulting practice without undertaking the usual quota of general practice. He was appointed honorary assistant surgeon in 1929 but terminated the post rather abruptly in 1935, finding it hard to accept medical styles and standards which he felt were many years behind the times. For the next seven years he was without a hospital appointment and continued a rather precarious private practice, developing a special interest in surgery of varicose veins, but was still hampered by ill health. Arrangements were made for him to travel to Sydney in 1936 for a thoracoplasty but the tuberculosis suddenly disappeared and never worried him again. Possibly due to his own illness he returned to England to study thoracic surgery and, in 1942, he was invited to start a new cardiothoracic surgical unit at the Green Lane Hospital. It was here that he achieved his major surgical fame. He was elected to the Council of Auckland University College in 1938 and was appointed to the Council of Massey Agricultural College in Palmerston North and then to the University Senate. He completed 33 years on the Council of Auckland University by a seven year term as Chancellor. He worked hard towards the founding of a school of medicine and although for many years he was a voice in the wilderness and was actively opposed by the medical school authorities in the University of Otago, he persisted and by 1959 the University of New Zealand appointed him chairman of a steering committee. It was 1968 before the school took its first students and in November 1973, Douglas Robb spoke at the first qualifying ceremony and saw the Douglas Robb Prize given to the most distinguished academic scholar in the clinical years of the course. Internationally he was well known. In 1956 his head was exhibited in bronze at the Royal Academy. Three years later he was elected as one of the two Simms Commonwealth Travelling Professors and travelled overseas to Africa and Britain in 1960. The following year he was elected Chairman of the BMA. In 1966 he visited China and in 1968 - when nearly seventy - he did a surgical locum in Honiara in the British Solomon Islands. He retired in 1964 but continued in his work for the New Zealand Medical Research Council, his promotion of medical education throughout the Commonwealth, his work for WHO and the development of the University. His leisure was spent in fishing and planting native trees during holidays at his cottage in the Bay of Islands. He died on the eve of his 75th birthday, 28 July 1974, survived by his wife, a son John and two daughters Jenny and Sally.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006891
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching d'Abreu, Alphonsus Liguori (1906 - 1976)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-11-25
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006400-E006499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378590378590
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon General surgeon
Details Alphonsus d'Abreu, 'Pon' to his many friends, was the younger son of a Birmingham general practitioner and was born on 5 April 1906. He was educated at Stonyhurst College and at Birmingham University. Following graduation in 1930 and resident and registrar appointments in Birmingham he became a lecturer and later assistant director of the surgical professorial unit at Cardiff. During the second world war he served in the RAMC as a surgical specialist in general and thoracic surgery, initially with the First Army in North Africa and then with the Eighth Army in Italy, eventually becoming OC surgical division with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. During this period he was awarded the OBE and was mentioned in dispatches. Following the war d'Abreu returned to Cardiff for a year as acting professor before appointment as consultant surgeon to the United Birmingham hospitals. For some time he remained involved in both general and thoracic surgery, but his expertise and interests led him ultimately into the purely cardiothoracic field. He became the first Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Birmingham in 1959 and also Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. With the retirement of Professor F A R Stammers in 1963 'Pon' also took over his chair though some felt that this over-stretched his responsibility. At the Royal College of Surgeons he served on Council for sixteen years, latterly for two years as Vice- President. He was also a member of the Court of Examiners and was twice elected Hunterian Professor. Outside the College he was President of the Section of Surgery at the Royal Society of Medicine in 1967; President of the Thoracic Society in 1968 and then President of the Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland in the following year. He served on the medical subcommittee of the University Grants Committee and was also a member of the Central Health Services Council from 1964 to 1971. He was Visiting Professor of Surgery at Harvard in 1967 and was elected FRCP in the following year. 'Pon' was an excellent practical surgeon who worked calmly and peacefully in the theatre. He took a keen interest in his juniors and always gave them the greatest of help and encouragement. Endowed with high intelligence, outstanding good looks, enormous energy and great manual dexterity his success was assured; but with all this he was always kind, modest, unassuming and invariably courteous to everyone whatever their station. After the war he served as honorary Colonel to the Medical Services 42 Division of the Territorial Army; he was also a Deputy Lieutenant of Warwickshire as well as a longstanding member and sometime Vice-President of Warwickshire County Cricket Club. In his youth he had been a keen cricketer and sound batsman: at that time too he had been very active in amateur dramatics and acted with Madeleine Carroll when she was an undergraduate at Birmingham. He married Elizabeth Throckmorton in 1935: they had three daughters and enjoyed a very happy home life in a lovely house with a much-loved garden. Despite his many commitments 'Pon' published a number of papers and his *Practice of thoracic surgery* was a notable work which went into four editions during his lifetime. His later years were marred by increasing disability from Parkinson's disease which was at first well-controlled, but he suffered a severe set-back following his wife's death on holiday in 1970. Despite these crushing blows, he maintained his endearing character and courage, fortified by his family and his Roman Catholic faith as well as by his many friends and outside interests. Towards the end his disease worsened rather rapidly and he died on 19 April 1976, survived by his three daughters and by his elder brother who is also a consultant surgeon.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006407
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Bromley, Lance Lee (1920 - 2013)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by P E A Savage
Publication Date 2013-06-12 2014-04-30
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004000-E004099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376263376263
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Lance Bromley was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at St Mary's Hospital, London. He was born on 16 February 1920 to Lancelot Bromley, a surgeon at Guy's Hospital, and Dora Ridgway Bromley née Lee of Dewsbury, Yorkshire. Educated at St Paul's School, Lance Bromley obtained his 1st MB examination there and went up to Caius College, Cambridge, in 1938 to read medicine. On obtaining his 2nd MB, he was offered a place for his clinical training at St Mary's by the dean, Charles Wilson (Later Lord Moran). The Blitz on London in the early 1940s forced the medical school to evacuate its students to Harefield Hospital near Uxbridge in northwest London, an Emergency Medical Services hospital in the grounds of a sanatorium for patients with tuberculosis. The students were taught medicine by George Pickering and surgery by David Levi. Lance, like many medical students, was much more interested in meeting real patients, although he admitted to being rather nervous and hesitant to begin with. It was an excellent beginning to clinical training and he was to see a variety of medical and surgical conditions, many of which were in a very advanced stage. With the cessation of enemy bombing the medical school returned to Paddington. During this time he left the wards for three months - going back to anatomy and physiology and taking the primary examination of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Sport was not neglected and he was selected to play rugby for the Barbarians from 1940 to 1943. Around this time Lance was a demonstrator of anatomy and student clinical assistant in the neurology department, working with Wilfred Harris, who was an expert in treating trigeminal neuralgia by needling through the front of the face into the ganglion. Qualifying in December 1943, Lance was appointed as a house surgeon to the senior surgeon at St Mary's R M Handfield-Jones, who was to become his 'father figure' and mentor. As the war with Germany continued, Bromley joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in December that year and was sent by troopship to India. While house surgeon to Thomas Field at the 40th West African General Hospital he was responsible for the care of West African troops fighting the Japanese with General Slim's 14th Army in Burma. There were many medical conditions, but filariasis and yaws were common conditions and a number of soldiers were suffering from schistosomiasis requiring cystocopy for diagnosis and follow up. Back in London with the rank of captain, Lance passed the final FRCS examination and obtained an ex-service registrar post in general surgery at St Mary's soon, moving up to senior registrar. The first year was spent with R M Handfield-Jones, A E Porritt and John Simpson, an ENT surgeon; and the second with Arthur Dickson Wright. Lance recalled these being the two happiest and most interesting years of his life. The work was varied, with many acute conditions. Dickson Wright was a master technician who would tackle any surgical problem. Unfortunately he had no idea of time: arriving an hour or so late for his afternoon session only to mumble something and disappear, returning at 10.30pm with never a word to the waiting team. In the summer of 1949 Lance's surgical appointment ended and he spent three months as a supernumerary registrar on the medical unit. Donald Brooks, a physician at St Mary's and the Brompton, urged him to apply for the resident surgical officer post at that hospital. Appointed in 1949, he worked with Clement Price Thomas, Bill Cleland and Norman Barrett. Pulmonary tuberculosis was still a common condition, with streptomycin just beginning to be introduced. Thoracic surgeons performed thoracoplasties and segmental lung resections. Adhesion section done via a thoracoscope was a common technique to induce a complete pneumothorax. Lung cancer was especially common, and resection was the only hope of cure at that time. Cigarette smoke was just being recognised as a cause, but little was done to discourage it. Price Thomas, having chain-smoked throughout his life, including during outpatient sessions, was to develop lung cancer himself. On completion of the Brompton attachment, Lance was appointed extra senior registrar at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at the Hammersmith Hospital working with Bill Cleland, Hugh Bentall and Denis Melrose, who was developing a heart lung machine. While still at the Hammersmith Lance became a senior lecturer to the surgical unit at St Mary's under Charles Rob. In 1952 he met a physiotherapist, Rosemary Anne Holbrook, at a party and they soon married. Shortly before taking up his consultant appointment Lance and Anne, with baby Christina, spent 10 months in the United States on an American Association for Thoracic Surgery travelling scholarship. Based at Harvard in the laboratories of Francis D Moore, whose vision of surgical teaching included physics, physiology, biochemistry, nutrition and metabolism, Lance saw at first hand the developments in cardiothoracic surgery which were to influence his subsequent approach to the specialty. While at Harvard Anne and Lance befriended H A F Dudley, who had a research post there, but who had left his wife and children behind in Edinburgh. Later Lance was to play a large part in encouraging Hugh Dudley, who by then had been 'transported' to Australia, to accept the offer of the chair in surgery at St Mary's. In 1953 Lance was appointed as a consultant thoracic surgeon to St Mary's Hospital. These were exciting years, with the rapid development of cardiac surgery and he still had a part-time appointment at the Hammersmith, where cardiopulmonary bypass was being developed. The same year he was also appointed as a consultant general surgeon at Teddington Hospital for one half day a week, alternating an outpatients' clinic with an operating session. This rewarding appointment, away from the stresses of cardiothoracic surgery, continued until his retirement. In the early 1950s the traditional work of the thoracic surgeon, pulmonary, pleural and oesophageal, was steadily expanding into the fields of cardiac surgery. Closed procedures such as valvotomy were soon augmented by more complex operations with the introduction of cardiopulmonary bypass. Cardiac and thoracic surgery was not an easy undertaking in those early days; patients were often very high risk and even 'too late' for salvage. Procedures now considered routine were pioneering operations. Each operation required different surgical skills and an understanding of varying physiological changes. One needed to be both a master of surgical technique and an expert in peri- and post-operative management. Initially Lance performed his own cardiac catheterisations until Edwin Besterman joined him as a consultant cardiologist, when they were able to form a joint cardiology surgical ward, with a happy and efficient nursing team and their own mini ITU. Before each operating session there would be a full team meeting at which every clinical detail and investigation result was considered with great care. At the end of each operation he would dictate a full description of the findings and procedure, often illustrated with a sketch, which was typed up immediately by his secretary. Lance was a very sound surgeon and a very calm one - never known to raise his voice. He appreciated his staff and always thanked the nurses and perfusionists after an operating session. St Mary's was fortunate at that time to have two pioneering peripheral vascular surgeons on the staff, H H G Eastcott and Ian Kenyon, and together they performed a number of ground-breaking procedures. At the suggestion of Dickson Wright, Lance developed a link with medical services in Gibraltar and, with Edwin Besterman's connections in Malta, they made regular trips to these countries to see outpatients, perform bronchoscopies and arrange for complicated surgical cases to go to St Mary's for operations under health agreements between the UK and Gibraltar and Malta. With rheumatic fever common in those countries, there was no shortage of patients with mitral stenosis. Although Lance never showed any outward signs of the pressure of his work, the inevitable failures affected him. He cared deeply for his patients and if one did not survive surgery he would often take the next day off for reflection; and in later years he would dream of his 'failures'. He was soon invited to join the London Society of Thoracic Surgeons, where the 'second generation' of thoracic surgeons (the first generation included Clement Price Thomas, Russell Brock and Thomas Holmes Sellors), who had had their training in London, would meet once a year 'to report to each other their two most dreadful mistakes in the previous year'. Meetings started with a topic review or presentation of surgical outcomes followed, after lunch, by the presentation of individual surgeon's 'Charlies'. The meeting was always followed by a good dinner. The Charlies Club met from 1952 to 1992 and the final minute recorded: 'When the Charlies were first set up it was thought by some of us that we might, as years went by, become pompous and thus unable to think of any mistakes we may have made. Happily this did not happen and from the first to the last clinical meeting the essential spirit of the Club prevailed and there was no lack of ghastly errors to report' (Royal College of Surgeons of England Archives. MS0148. London Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Minutes of Meetings of The Charlies Club. 1952-1992). With an increasingly busy professional life, Lance and Anne moved from Roehampton to Hyde Park Crescent, a short walk from the hospital. Now with three daughters and a larger house, there was always extra room for visitors, and lonely trainees from the Antipodes were often to be found lodging in the attic. Lance was a family man and loved the evening meal with all the family in their basement kitchen. Family and friends joined together in a meal that would last for hours - with Lance fast asleep at the end of the table by the conclusion of the evening! For most of Lance's consultant career he was supported only by senior registrars rotating through general or vascular surgery. In the 1970s surgery for coronary artery disease was developing rapidly as coronary angiography became readily available under the direction of consultant radiologist David Sutton. Now in his 50s, Lance was not happy with undertaking the fine suturing of artery and vein grafts, and delegated this task to a number of able general senior registrars who worked as his first assistant. In 1976 Stuart Lennox, on the staff of the Brompton Hospital, became a part-time consultant at Mary's. Having been 'solo' for so many years, Lance was able to slow down at last. Lance enjoyed teaching and for several years was an examiner for the London final MB BS examination. Although he published a number of papers, he admitted to never being an academic and usually had to get up early to complete a paper to meet a deadline. Lance found his year as chairman of the medical committee interesting and challenging. Working with the house governor, Alan Powditch, and the matron, Miss Douglas, he dealt with the personalities and idiosyncrasies of his colleagues with charm and efficiency. Lance loved sailing and often said he would have liked to have been a yacht builder. Initially crewing for friends, he was able eventually to afford his own yacht and became a member of the Royal Ocean Yacht Club. Anne would usually accompany him (although she was easily seasick) and many of his friends and trainees were invited to join them on their Nicholson 32 *Murmur* sailing out of Newhaven or Gosport. On his retirement in 1980 at the age of 60, Lance became director of Medical and Health Services in Gibraltar for three years - where he could keep his last Nicholson boat *Sunmaid of Sussex*. In retirement he had time to take up golf again with renewed vigour and enthusiasm, and enjoyed gardening at their cottage at Barcombe. An early pioneering cardiothoracic surgeon who developed the speciality single-handed in his hospital, Lance Bromley is remembered with affection by his colleagues as a man of great integrity, by his many surgical trainees as a teacher, mentor and friend who showed his concern and interest in their careers, and by his patients for his kindness, gentleness and surgical skill. He was devoted to his wife Anne and their three daughters Tina, Louise and Rachel. He died on 25 April 2013, aged 93.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004080
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Keen, Gerald (1926 - 2022)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2022-10-03
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010100-E010199
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Gerald Keen was a cardiothoracic surgeon at Bristol Royal Infirmary, Bristol Royal Hospital for Sick Children and Frenchay Hospital from 1964 until 1991. His most enduring achievements were the introduction of cardiopulmonary bypass to Bristol in 1965 and the enlargement of the facilities for open-heart surgery, which permitted the volume of work carried out in Bristol to increase from a little over 60 operations each year in 1964 to over 900 when he retired. He was born on 9 February 1926 in London, the son of Myer Keen and Rachel Mary Keen née Waller, who had a grocery store in Lambeth, the family living above the shop. He was awarded an entrance scholarship to Westminster Hospital, where he qualified in 1949. After two years of National Service in the jungles of Malaya from 1950 to 1952, which he considered a ‘maturing’ experience, he embarked upon a surgical career. Specialising in thoracic and cardiac surgery, the latter very much in its pioneering stages, he trained with Russell Brock at the Brompton Hospital and with Charles Drew and Price Thomas at Westminster Hospital. During this time he worked in the laboratory under Drew’s direction, developing the technique of profound hypothermia and circulatory arrest, one of the methods which permitted open-heart surgery to begin. Later he had the opportunity to work for a year in San Francisco with Frank Gerbode, the noted American heart surgeon, who contributed to the training of a number of British heart surgeons. Keen’s practice was originally thoracic and cardiac, both adult and paediatric, but over the years he concentrated increasingly on adult cardiac surgery, predominantly valve replacement and coronary artery bypass surgery. Cardiac surgery was an evolving specialty during his working life, and he incorporated successive developments into his own practice. Except in his final years of work, he had just one cardiac surgical colleague, with whom he had an excellent working relationship; they both maintained an immense commitment to the care of their patients. He found time to publish several papers, to become a Hunterian Professor of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (from 1971 to 1972), to write a textbook on chest injuries (*Chest injuries: a guide for the accident department* Wright, 1975) and to edit one entitled *Operative surgery and management* (Bristol, J Wright, 1981). His introduction of cardiopulmonary bypass and the development of the unit required considerable determination and was achieved in the face of some resistance. He lived many years after retirement and had the satisfaction of seeing his unit working to the highest standards and the equal of any in the country. His legacy also includes many patients enjoying a good quality life after successful treatment and those young doctors whose training was, for a longer or a shorter time, under his supervision. He was an ideal colleague – loyal, supportive and cooperative. His sense of humour was mischievous, and, on his day, he was a great raconteur. In retirement he maintained a medico-legal practice for many years and enjoyed golf and bridge as well as being an avid reader. Marion (née Goodwin), his beloved wife of 61 years, predeceased him in 2016 and he was survived by their two sons, David, a dentist, and Richard, an industrialist. James D Wisheart **Gerald Keen also wrote his own obituary, which he sent to the Royal College of Surgeons of England in November 2020:** Gerald Keen was born in London above his parents’ grocery shop, which his father opened in 1920 after returning from the First World War. He was educated at Coopers’ Company School, one of several City of London ancient grammar schools. He entered King’s College London in 1944 and Westminster Hospital in 1946 with an entrance scholarship in anatomy and physiology. Following qualification, he was called to military service, and served for two years as a regimental medical officer to the Scots Guards and Malay Regiment in the jungles of Malaya during the Emergency, a very maturing and worthwhile experience for a young man. He trained in general and later cardiac surgery at Westminster and Brompton hospitals and in San Francisco. Modern open-heart surgery in the 1950s, apart from one or two centres in London, was totally undeveloped in the rest of the UK. In the 1950s and early 1960s a number of young surgeons, including Keen, went to the USA for training in this new specialty, where it was well established as a result of huge financial investment, helped by the American determination to succeed. His year in San Francisco with Frank Gerbode was very rewarding professionally and a very happy time for his wife Marion and their sons, David and Richard. He was appointed to Bristol Royal Infirmary in 1964 as the first and only full time cardiac surgeon in the southwest of England, caring for 3.2 million people. At that time chest surgeons undertook all types of cardiac surgery at all ages, together with lung surgery, oesophageal surgery and chest injuries, whereas today the modern cardiac surgeon restricts their practice to cardiac surgery. There was no intensive care unit for a further four years. In 1964 diagnostic ultrasound, CT scanners, MRI scanners and coronary angiography were for the future and appeared at least five to 12 years after his appointment. The underfunding and general lethargy of the system at the time, coupled with the poor understanding of modern cardiology, were important obstacles to progress. There were no trained cardiologists or paediatric cardiologists in Bristol until 1974 and much of the anaesthesia was conducted by GP anaesthetists. For the next ten years he and a younger colleague were faced with a huge pool of patients with advanced and often terminal heart failure, so far treated with the inadequate drugs of the time, who were offered for surgery as a last resort and with a consequent high mortality. This early experience was typical of most embryonic cardiac surgical centres, which were under resourced, under trained and under staffed, and consequently cardiac surgery in the UK was hazardous. It was some years before cardiac surgery in the UK became a safe and routine specialty. A new modern hospital building was built in 1971 and the top floor was planned as a nurses’ sick bay. Fortunately he was able to persuade the management that the idea of a nurses’ sick bay was antiquated, and it was agreed that this ward of 20 beds should become the new cardiac surgical ward. Eventually the unit with eight consultant cardiothoracic surgeons and a large team of cardiologists, anaesthetists and nurses was housed in its own building and over 2,500 operations were performed annually. Further units were opened in Exeter and Plymouth, a total of 15 cardiac surgeons for the same 3.2 million population served initially by one surgeon in the southwest. He regarded his cardiac surgical life as a journey from the Wright brothers to Concorde. He brought back his American training to the UK and developed this with Russell Brock, Clement Price Thomas and Charles Drew, with whom he developed the technique of profound hypothermia, particularly useful in the open-heart surgery of infants when cooling to 15°C allowed the surgeon prolonged periods of total circulatory arrest for operating on the still open heart. For this work he was awarded the degree of master of surgery. He developed a special interest in the traumatic rupture of the aorta and published on a large series of successfully treated patients (usually motor cyclists), the basis of his Hunterian Professorship at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (‘Closed injuries of the thoracic aorta’ *Ann R Coll Surg Engl*. 1972 Sep; 51[3]: 137-156). He found time to produce textbooks on chest injuries (*Chest injuries: a guide for the accident department* Wright, 1975) and operative surgery (*Operative surgery and management* Bristol, J Wright, 1981). His contributions to cardiac surgery and its development in Bristol were generously acknowledged by the Department of Health. The family were very happy in Bristol. Sons David and Richard were educated at Clifton College, David becoming a dental surgeon and Richard chairman of a national construction company. Marion, his beloved wife of 61 years, spent 30 years as a volunteer, teaching juniors in deprived areas to read – she was rewarded with an invitation to a garden party at Buckingham Palace. During his sometimes early disheartening career he was strongly supported by Marion, who sadly died in 2016. In his final few years he found companionship and comfort with Isabel Norris. Gerald Keen
Resource Identifier RCS: E010162
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Dyde, John Anthony (1935 - 2010)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2010-09-30
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001000-E001099
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Tony Dyde was a cardiothoracic surgeon at Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry. He was born in Plymouth on 30 May 1935, the son of John Horsfall Dyde, chairman of the Eastern Gas Board, and Ethel May Hewitt, and was educated at Rugby, where he excelled at cricket, hockey and rugby football. He then went up to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he gained a blue for hockey and had an England trial. During a long vacation he worked in the dining room of the Devon Coast Country Club. His duties included the entertainment of guests, mainly London Hospital nurses, in the evening. From Cambridge, he went on Guy’s Hospital for his clinical studies. He was an outstanding student both academically as well as on the sports field, and on qualification he became a house physician to the dean, E R Boland, a rather daunting physician who wore a black monocle. After a spell in the accident department, he was a house surgeon to Sam Wass, the most sought-after post in the surgical department. While doing this job he fell ill with a stomach bug during an epidemic that had swept the hospital, perhaps the ‘winter vomiting virus’. The epidemic was so big that medical wards had to be used to cater for the volume of sick staff, mostly nurses. The resident medical officer of the day Maurice Lessof (later professor of medicine at Guy’s) was not happy with Tony’s condition and obtained a second opinion from the senior physician – Arthur Douthwaite. After his usual brusque assessment of the case, acute appendicitis was diagnosed and an acutely inflamed appendix was duly removed. The next week, when the great man arrived in his Rolls Royce at the front entrance of Guy’s, he was met as usual by Lessof, the senior registrar, junior registrar, two or three house men and a ward sister or two. As the cavalcade passed into the hospital Douthwaite asked “…by the way Lessof, how is that house surgeon I saw last week with appendicitis?” “Dyde, Sir?” replied Lessof. “Oh, I am so sorry” said the great man. Tony recovered and continued his job with Sam Wass. During the summer of that year Dyde married Shirley Priestley, who had been inspected by Sam Wass as a suitable girl to marry his house surgeon. The stag party was memorable: the best man took a dislike to the coloured lights that summoned junior doctors and beat the set on the wall in the residents’ common room to a pulp, fusing the system. The hospital was without a call system until the electricians replaced the mangled piece of steel and wires. A furious superintendent John Blaikley sent for Tony the next morning. Tony could not remember the incident: the superintendent asked in a concerned way “I believe Dyde that they put something in your beer.” Nothing more was said. Tony and Shirley then went to Bristol, where he worked with such surgical giants as Bob Horton, Bill Capper, Milnes Walker and Ronald Belsey, who may have kindled his interest in cardiothoracic surgery. He then went to Sheffield as a registrar, passed the final FRCS in 1963 and went back to Guy’s as a registrar to the thoracic unit, headed by Russell Brock and Donald Ross. It was a very stressful time at Guy’s when the third heart transplant in England was performed and Tony took the brunt of the postoperative care. During this period he went to work for Phil Ashmore in Vancouver. They remained firm friends for many years to come. As a senior registrar to Lord Brock and Donald Ross, Tony was a rapid and competent cardiac surgeon. On one occasion Brock was late. Tony, working with a very slick anaesthetist, had opened the chest and placed the patient on by pass – but still there was no Brock. Tony did what was necessary, replacing a valve or two and was just sewing up when the great man appeared in the theatre. “How are you getting on, Dyde?” “Just closing up, sir” said Tony. At which Brock turned on his heel and left the theatre. When Brock retired, Alan Yates took his place and he and Tony made a great team. By this time Robert Brain, a thoracic surgeon, joined the unit, which now provided a complete training programme in all aspects of the specialty, including a formal rotation with St Thomas’ and the Brook Hospital. In 1972, Tony was appointed to Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, joining Roger Abbey Smith and Bill Williams, where he spent the rest of his surgical career and together they made Walsgrave one of most productive and efficient training programmes in cardiothoracic surgery in the UK. They started the biennial Coventry conference, which became one of the best postgraduate discussion groups in the specialty to which world experts were invited. They would introduce the subject under discussion in presentations of about 30 minutes, which were followed by 90 minutes of free ranging discussion with all attendees contributing to the arguments. A tremendous amount of ground was covered and a lot was learned by all attending. Tony took over the last couple of these conferences on his own until he realised that some degree of repetition was occurring, and decided to call it a day. In addition to being an extremely busy cardiac surgeon, Tony found time to travel to Lahore and helped to establish their cardiac unit, which entailed patience and tolerance of a medical culture very different from his own. The unit he set up is named after him and continues to save lives in Pakistan. In the latter years at Walsgrave, Tony became the clinical director of cardiothoracic surgery and medical director of the hospital and played a part in devising a magnificent new Walsgrave Hospital. He retired in 1997 to continue his love of fishing and golf, becoming captain of his local golf club, which gave him great pride and pleasure until ill health put this to an end.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001024
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Barratt-Boyes, Sir Brian Gerald (1924 - 2006)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

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

First Title value, for Searching Sellors, Sir Thomas Holmes (1902 - 1987)

2024-05-03T13:42:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2006-06-01 2012-03-09
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000200-E000299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372424372424
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Thomas Holmes Sellors, the only son of Dr Thomas Blanchard Sellors, a general practitioner and of Anne Oliver Sellors (née McSparron) was born on 7 April 1902, at Wandsworth. A few years later his father moved his practice to Southend-on-Sea and Tom, as he was always known, went to Alleyn Court Preparatory School at Westcliff-on-Sea, before moving to Loretto School, Musselburgh, and then to Oriel College, Oxford. He secured a university entrance scholarship to the Middlesex Hospital and qualified there in 1926. Following resident medical and surgical appointments at the Middlesex and Brompton Hospitals, he was surgical registrar to Gordon Taylor at the Middlesex. During this period he was the first recipient of the G.H. Hunt Travelling Scholarship, awarded by Oxford University in 1928, and was able to spend some time at surgical centres in Scandinavia. After a thorough grounding in general surgery, during which period he later recorded his indebtedness to Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor, R.V. Hudson, Tudor Edwards and the physicians R.A. Young and Evan Bedford, he decided to specialise in chest surgery. He was an excellent technician and, with the contemporary rapid developments in anaesthesia, he was keen to devote himself to the specialty. He surprised some of his seniors when his book *Surgery of the thorax* was published in 1933. In the early 1930's few of the London teaching hospitals, or the large general hospitals, offered opportunity for the newly emerging surgical specialties. But opportunity came with his appointment to the staff of the London Chest Hospital in 1934, followed by further appointments to the Royal Waterloo Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital, Stratford. He also secured appointments at various London County Council hospitals and sanatoria, and started chest units at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and at Leicester Royal Infirmary which entailed much travelling by car and an immense workload. Such was the peripatetic and scattered character of thoracic practice in a period when tuberculosis was principal preoccupation of a chest surgeon. On the outbreak of the second world war he was appointed adviser in thoracic surgery to the North West Metropolitan Region, based on Harefield Hospital, Middlesex, where he worked most happily and productively until his retirement. Shorttly after the war, in 1947, he was appointed thoracic surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital where he developed close and cordial relationships with the cardiologists Evan Bedford and Walter Somerville, to whose skilful assessment of cardiac problems he always paid warm tribute. From this time onwards, both at Middlesex Hospital and Harefield, cardiac surgery progressively displaced most of his earlier pulmonary and oesophageal work. As a result of this, in 1957, he was appointed as consultant surgeon to the National Heart Hospital when cardiac surgery became a rather belated funcition of that institution. In the second half of his surgical life he set up open heart surgery units at these last three hospitals. But he never allowed cardiac surgery at the Middlesex to threaten the work of other departments, such was his concern for the interests of his colleagues. A number of the other hospitals to which he had previously been attached provided opportunity for several of his trainees to establish thoracic and cardiac surgical centres. Ever courteous in the operation room, he was superb craftsman and a master of sharp dissection. He was never known to raise his voice, nor did he ever blame anyone else when things went wrong. A clumsy assistant might received his favourite admonition "Juggins!". But he had a devoted and enthusiastic band of trainees, some of whom became internationally renowned and several of whom predeceased him. To all of them he was affectionately known as "Uncle Tom." He was up at daybreak, or earlier, often visiting a ward before the residents or day staff were around. His gentlemanly style and good manners ensured excellent rapport with nursing staff and gave immense confidence to his patients. He worked with deceptive rapidity and economy of effort, seldom wasting time with idle chatter, so much so that an astute trainee - anxious to secure his shrewd advice under rather pressing conditions - once hopped into his car and took an unplanned trip from Harefield to London with him. Despite being in the forefront of cardiac surgery in this country, he showed a healthy conservatism in avoiding frankly experimental procedures. Nevertheless, having set out to do a Blalock operation, which proved quite impossible due to dense lung adhesions in a man with bilateral pulmonary tubercule, and noting the tightness of the valvular obstruction, he calmly borrowed a tenotomy knife from a nearly orthopaedic theartre and did the first direct operation for the relief of pulmonary stenosis. It is worthy of report that, on hearing of this operation, one of his rivals then emulated him and got into print first. He learnt his hypothermic technique from Henry Swann and then closed some five hundred atrial septal defects, in which procedure his results were unrivalled at that time. He next unashamedly learnt his cardiopulmonary by-pass technique from John Kirklin, by which time his rapid technique became relatively less essential to a successful outcome. He had retired before coronary artery by-pass was established and later frankly admitted that he had believed the successful anastomosis of such small vessels to be impracticable. From the inception of the National Health Service in 1948 he was active in the medico-political field. This was almost an inadvertent development, surprising in a man who was so deeply involved in his surgical work, but largely due to his public spiritedness and readiness to serve his colleagues. He was chairman of the North West Metropolitan Consultants' and Specialists' Committee for some years; was a member of the Central Consultants' Committee form its inception and its chairman for five years. He was elected to Council of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1957. The following year he became Chairman of the Joint Consultants' Committee in succession to Lord Brain, a demanding task which he undertook for eleven years, having received the accolade of Knight Bachelor in 1963. A year after demitting office as chairman of JCC, and having been Vice-President for one year, he was elected President of the Royal College of Surgeons from 1969 to 1972. Earlier at the College he had been Tudor Edwards and Gordon-Taylor lecturer, and was then Bradshaw lecturer in 1968 and Hunterian Orator in 1973. He also served as President of the British Medical Association and was awarded its Gold Medal. After demitting office at the Royal College of Surgeons he was elected a College Patron and an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Dental Surgery. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Hunterian Collection and ultimately its Chairman. Despite his intensely busy surgical life he travelled widely abroad, lecturing and demonstrating in Europe, India, Russia and South America. He also visited the United States, Canada, Japan and South Africa, becoming an honorary fellow of the surgical colleges of South Africa and America, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He was elected to the FRCP London and to honorary membership of the European Cardiological Society, the Academy of Medicine in Rome and the Royal Academy of Medicine in Belgium. Whilst giving a number of eponymous lectures in the course of his travels he received honorary degrees at Groningen, Liverpool and Southampton, as well as the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Française, and became an officer of the Order of Carlos Finlay, Cuba. He had a strongly international outlook and did much for the generality of surgery and in particular for the International Society of Surgery, of which he was President from 1977 to 1979. Well after retirement from hospital and private practice he supported many good causes. He was Chairman of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund for five years; Chairman of the National Heart Foundation; Chairman and later President of the Medical Council on Alcoholism. Apart from the publication of his textbook at an early age, he wrote many papers and edited a number of other cardiothoracic works. He had a capacity for graceful living and was a keen gardener and a proficient painter in water colours. Few were privy to the personal tragedies he suffered during a long life of service. In 1928, aged 26, he had married Brenda Lyell, who died of appendicitis a few weeks later. In 1932 he married Elizabeth Cheshire by whom he had a son and a daughter; but, when both children were in their 'teens their mother developed a stroke and hypertension. She died in 1953 when Tom was at one of the most demanding periods of his life. He married his secretary, Marie Hobson, in 1955, a union which was to last thirty years. Ironically, as the non-smoking wife of a thoracic surgeon, she developed lung cancer and died nearly two years before him. When he died on 13 September 1987 he was survived by his daughter, Susan, and by his son, Patrick, who is a fellow of the College and Surgeon-Oculist to Her Majesty the Queen. A service of thanksgiving was held at St Clement Danes Church, on 2 December, 1987 when the address was given by Sir Reginald Murley, PPRCS.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000237
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset