Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: General practitioner - Ophthalmic surgeon

First Title value, for Searching Rao, Dhulipala Kameswara (1905 - 1973)

2024-05-12T09:40:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-10-02
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/378237378237
Occupation General practitioner Ophthalmic surgeon
Details Dhulipala Kameswara Rao was born in Andhra Pradesh, South India, on 18 August 1905, the son of a lawyer. He was educated locally until he entered the Madras Medical College, from which he graduated MB BS in 1930. He was a junior house officer at the Government General Hospital and at the Government Maternity Hospital Madras, and obtained the diploma in gynaecology and obstetrics in 1932. He then worked for four years in general practice in 1936 came to Britain to obtain higher qualifications. He passed the FRCS Edinburgh in 1938 and then settled down for the rest of his working life in the Birmingham district. Rao was first a house surgeon at the Birmingham Ear and Throat Hospital in 1938-9, and then in 1940 he went to the Birmingham and Midland Eye Hospital as house surgeon, and, in 1941, resident surgical officer. From 1942 onwards, for the rest of his career, he worked there as senior hospital medical officer and clinical assistant. Ophthalmology thus became his principal interest and he obtained the FRFPS Glasgow in 1950, and the Diploma in Ophthalmology in 1951. From 1956 he was also ophthalmic clinical assistant at the West Bromwich and District Hospital, and SHMO at the Birmingham Children's Hospital from 1960. As the years passed his interest in ophthalmology deepened, and it became his ambition to obtain the Fellowship in ophthalmology. After many failures in the examination during the 1960's he ultimately succeeded in 1971. Rao was married in 1923 and had a son and two daughters of whom the younger took up medicine and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and worked as an anaesthetist in Southport. He left his family in India when he first came to Britain. He died at the age of 67 on 9 July 1973, in Birmingham.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006054
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Greeves, Reginald Affleck (1878 - 1966)

2024-05-12T09:40:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-08-05
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005700-E005799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377943377943
Occupation Curator General practitioner Ophthalmic surgeon Pathologist
Details Born at Springtown, Co Down, on 23 August 1878, youngest of the eleven children of Thomas M. Greeves whose family, at first Quakers and later Plymouth Brethren, had been settled in Northern Ireland since the mid-seventeenth century. Affleck Greeves was educated at Queen's University, Belfast, where he won an exhibition, and at University College Hospital and Guy's, graduating MB London in 1903 and BS with honours in 1906, when he also took the Conjoint Diploma in the summer and the Fellowship in December. For the next two years he was in general practice in the Transvaal, South Africa, where he married, in 1908, Sarah, daughter of Leonard Acutt of Natal. Returning to London he was appointed surgical tutor and registrar at Guy's, but decided to specialise in ophthalmology. After serving as pathologist and curator of the museum at the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital (Moorfields), he was appointed assistant ophthalmic surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital in 1914 and to Moorfields in 1915. He became a consultant surgeon to both these hospitals, retiring from Moorfields at the sixty-year age limit in 1938, but from the Middlesex only in 1946. He had also been on the staff at Paddington Green Children's Hospital and at St Saviour's Hospital, had lectured on ophthalmology at Oxford, and was a Conjoint Board examiner for the DOMS. Though somewhat nervous and reserved, Greeves was a brilliant diagnostician, achieved excellent results as a surgeon, and proved a first-class teacher, particularly in clinical work with graduate students. He became an authority on lesions of the fundus, whose opinion was sought and valued by colleagues and former students long after his retirement. He published influential papers on ocular pathology and many case histories, particularly in the *Transactions of the Ophthalmological Society*, of which he was a member for fifty-five years, becoming President for 1941-42. He was Montgomery Lecturer at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1935. Greeves carried on a large private practice at 23 Wimpole Street long after giving up his hospital work, finally retiring in 1960 when he was eighty-two. His country home was at Crapstone, near Yelverton, in Devonshire. His wife had died in 1954, and he died on 4 October 1966 aged eighty-eight, survived by his daughter and two sons, the elder of whom was also an ophthalmic surgeon. Though brought up in a narrowly puritanical home, Greeves was a man of wide cultivation, a traveller and linguist, a pianist and trained musician, with a keen appreciation of painting and drawing. His students and patients became his lifelong friends.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005760
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Luke, Clifton James (1925 - 1991)

2024-05-12T09:40:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-17 2015-10-14
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008100-E008199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380339380339
Occupation General practitioner Medical Officer Ophthalmic surgeon
Details Clifton James Luke was born in Sydney, Australia, on 25 April 1925, the only son of Clive Herbert Luke, a businessman, and Dorothy May (nee Mullaney) whose father was Mayor of Goulburn, New South Wales, and whose great grandfather had been the Professor of Botany at Dublin University. His education was at St Patrick's College, Strathfield NSW and the University of Sydney, where he qualified MBBS in 1947. He was resident medical officer at St Vincent's Hospital then at Townsville Base Hospital from 1949 to 1950. After five years as the medical officer with the Department of Immigration in Rome and Athens he returned to the St George's area in 1957 to general practice. Following this wide experience he sailed to the UK to commence training in ophthalmology at Moorfield's Eye Hospital, London, where he passed his DO in 1962. In 1963 he attended the Basic Sciences course in the RCS, ensuring that his friends learnt one fact a day thoroughly. Many of these were to be tested in the subsequent Primary FRCS. He worked in the Western Ophthalmic Hospital from 1965 to 1967, passing his FRCS. Subsequently he was appointed visiting ophthalmic surgeon to the Prince of Wales Hospital and lecturer in ophthalmology at the University of New South Wales. From 1967 he was honorary assistant ophthalmic surgeon to St George's Hospital in Sydney. He regularly worked in eye camps in India arranged by the Jesuit missions. He met and married Iris Newton in Rome in 1954 and they had three daughters and one son; Caroline is a general practitioner in London; Margaret, Elizabeth and Peter are all in the paramedical professions. He was filled with a great sense of adventure, and after a small aircraft flight throughout the north of Australia and the Solomon Islands he learnt to fly. He was an active skier, yachtsman and trout fisherman throughout his life and was a great traveller. An enthusiast, he imparted this to his friends and colleagues and was always most generous to his juniors, to whom he gave considerable help during their early years of individual practice. Actively involved in local medical politics he served as President of the Illawarra Suburbs Medical Association from 1981 to 1983. In his last years he moved to Potts Point where he helped many country colleagues by relieving them as *locum tenens*. His terminal illness of repeated episodes of multiple thromboemboli of unknown aetiology lasted for three years: he maintained his usual cheerful humour, showing tremendous courage till the end. He died peacefully at the age of 66 on 6 September 1991 from melaena from ruptured oesophageal varices. Cliff was trusted by his patients, respected by his colleagues and loved by his family and many friends. He met his wife Iris in Rome and they married in 1954. Clifton James Luke died on 6 September 1991 aged 66. He was survived his wife and their four children: Caroline, Margaret, Elizabeth and Peter.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008156
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Talbot, Leonard Smith (1880 - 1961)

2024-05-12T09:40:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-10-20
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006100-E006199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378360378360
Occupation ENT surgeon General practitioner Ophthalmic surgeon
Details Leonard Smith Talbot was born in 1880 the fourth son of J. Talbot of Rangitira Valley, one of a well-known farming family in South Canterbury, New Zealand. He was educated at the Timaru Boys' High School and Temuka District High School, and graduated MB ChB from Otago Medical School, Dunedin in 1902. In his final year he was awarded the Lindo Fergusson Prize for the most outstanding student in eye, ear, nose, and throat studies. After a year as a house surgeon at Timaru Hospital, Talbot travelled to England where he gained the Diploma in Public Health at Cambridge and the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. On his return to Timaru in 1906 he went into general practice with Dr Gabites as his partner. He married Emma Cooper of Temuka in 1907. In 1913 he went again to London to make a special study of eye, ear, nose and throat conditions. Early in 1915 he returned to Timaru as a specialist, and carried on this practice until his retirement in 1958, fifty-five years after qualifying. When his brother, Arthur Newton Talbot, was killed in the first world war, Talbot renamed one of his sons, already christened by other names, 'Arthur Newton'. He had been a prominent mountaineer, whose name is also recorded by the Grave-Talbot Pass on the Milford Trace, 'the world's wonder walk' which leads past the Sutherland Falls to Lake Te Anau in the extreme southwest of the South Island. Early in his specialist career he saw the potentialities of Lake Tekapo as a health resort, and worked unceasingly for the development of the area. Noting its beneficial effect on his patients he became a foundation member and chairman for many years of the Lake Tekapo Planning Commission. In the second world war Talbot went with the 8th Brigade of the 2nd NZEF to the Pacific in 1940 and helped to establish hospitals in Fiji, New Caledonia, and the Solomon Islands. He returned to New Zealand with the rank of Major. In 1945 at the request of the Director-General of Medical Services for the New Zealand Military Forces Talbot carried out a special investigation of epidemic eye disease in Fiji, in company with Lieutenant- Colonel W J Hope-Robertson of Wellington; their work earned high commendation. He was a foundation member of the South Canterbury Branch of the British Medical Association, and had the distinction of being invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons when it was founded in 1927. He was eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist at the Timaru Hospital from 1926 to 1946. He made study visits to Vienna and the United Kingdom in 1923 and 1932. A lover of trees and of his garden, Talbot was a member of the South Canterbury Tree Planting Association, and a prime mover in preserving "Gully Bush" which is now known as the Waitohi Scenic Reserve. He was a member of the South Canterbury Historical Society, Timaru Rotary Club, South Canterbury Returned Services Association, Royal Overseas League, and the Readers' play-reading group. For many years he was a parent representative on the Timaru High School Board of Governors, and throughout his life he was a member of St Mary's Anglican Church. Talbot died on 13 September 1961, aged eighty-one, and was survived by his wife with their daughter and two sons, one of whom - A N Talbot - became an ophthalmic surgeon at 19 Robe Street, New Plymouth in the North Island.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006177
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Rycroft, Sir Benjamin William (1902 - 1967)

2024-05-12T09:40:22Z

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/378262378262
Occupation General practitioner Ophthalmic surgeon
Details Benjamin William Rycroft was born in a small village in Yorkshire in 1902. In his youth he learned to play the organ well enough to do so in his parish church and thus was mildly attracted to the ministry as a profession. Instead, he studied medicine in St Andrew's University (1919-1924) and after qualifying, he started general practice in Bradford, Yorkshire. His interest turned to ophthalmology and at great expenditure of time and energy he took the Diploma in Ophthalmic Medicine and Surgery in 1929, three years after his marriage to Mary Rhodes, who survived him. He continued his practice in Bradford, travelling up to London on week-ends to study for his Fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons which he attained in 1931. He then moved to Taplow and London where he worked as a clinical assistant at St George's Hospital and later at Moorfields Eye Hospital. About this time he became intrigued with the problem of transplantation of the cornea, which became the main interest of his professional life and in which he excelled. His skill, dedication and industry, combined in an aggressively honest, yet kindly character, earned him at this early age increasing recognition and support of his colleagues. He became a Hunterian Professor and Leverhulme Scholar at the Royal College of Surgeons, a Lang Research Scholar at Moorfields and Middlemore Prizeman of the British Medical Association. He was associated with the medical staff of the Maidenhead Hospital, King George's Hospital, Ilford, the East Ham Memorial Hosptial and the Royal Eye Hospital in London. These were happy and fruitful years of almost ferocious professional activity, during which his private practice increased prodigiously and brought him, in addition to the admiration of his colleagues, the devotion of his patients. Behind him stood Mary and his two sons, and the security of a happy home. His remarkable aptitude for clinical research began about this time and soon became manifest. His first paper on keratoplasty was published in 1935. When war broke out in 1939 he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving first in Northern Ireland, then in North Africa and Italy where he acted as chief consultant in ophthalmology to the British Army with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. On the way to his post in North Africa the hospital ship, *Windsor Castle* in which he was being transported, was sunk by an aerial torpedo off Oran. His son Peter (see next entry), wrote in a short biography of his father "Fortunately, he was rescued in his pyjamas by the destroyer, *Eggesford* (Hunt Class), but he never forgot the drama of the hours in the sea awaiting rescue, and the panic that preceded it. He visited the village of Eggesford in Devon in later years, and attended a meet of hounds at the local pub and gave thanks." Towards the end of the war he wrote his first book *A manual for Field Officers*, which was widely used by the Army. At the end of the war he was awarded the OBE and resumed his civilian practice in London. Although, like most of his colleagues, he disliked socialized medicine for many cogent reasons, he adapted himself to the times and was appointed consultant ophthalmic surgeon to Park Prewitt Emergency Medical Service Hospital, near Basingstoke, to Moorfields, and to the Canadian War Memorial Hospital at Taplow. His old patients had impatiently awaited his return from military service and began by the hundreds to rejoin his practice, which had over 15,000 patients on the register at the time of his death. In 1945, he was asked by Sir Archibald Mclndoe, famous for his successful plastic surgery on mutilated and burned pilots at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, to establish an eye department within the unit. With the birth of the Corneo-Plastic Unit at East Grinstead, Rycroft really gathered momentum in his work. "Corneal grafts, lacrimal surgery, lid surgery particularly ptosis, surgery of the socket and orbit claimed his full attention," said his son Peter, "and his publications proved that such a specialized centre had much to contribute to general ophthalmic surgery. His students came from many lands and appreciated the personal training with a small but dedicated team, in a way that is impossible to achieve in a large centre." In 1952 he was mainly responsible for initiating a national campaign, using modern methods of communications, for a corneal grafting act. The campaign was supported by Sir Cecil Wakeley, then President of the Royal College of Surgeons; by the South East Regional Hospital Board; his medical colleagues, the press and the public. The Act was passed in 1952 and with it the first United Kingdom Eye Bank was established in East Grinstead. It became an immediate success. The Act later (1961) was broadened to include other human tissue and is now known as The Human Tissue Act. Thus it can be claimed with justice, that Benjamin Rycroft paved the way for legal methods of obtaining, preserving and utilizing, all parts of the human body for purposes of transplantation in the British Isles. In 1955 a book appeared under his editorship, *Corneal grafts*. Four of the sixteen chapters were written by Rycroft, the others by different international authorities on the subject. It was well received by ophthalmic surgeons everywhere, and was the first book of its kind to be published in the English language. It also revealed Rycroft as a lucid, even exciting, writer and a sound editor. By this time he had published, either alone or in collaboration, eleven noteworthy contributions on the subject of corneal grafts. In the spring of 1959 at East Grinstead he launched the First Corneo-Plastic Conference. It was financed by funds given by grateful patients and businessmen who admired his enthusiasm and work. The Conference was successful, and attracted a good audience of British and many foreign ophthalmologists, who departed impressed and stimulated by the work they had seen and shared. It is certain that the good reception that Rycroft had with this first conference determined him to plan for a second one in 1967, which he did not live to enjoy. The following year, 1960, he was knighted, an honour that pleased hundreds of friends, colleagues and patients. He was rightly proud of this great honour that he so richly deserved. The Fourth International Course of Ophthalmology of the Barraquer Institute was held in Barcelona, Spain, April 28-May 6, 1965. Sir Benjamin Rycroft, an old friend of the Barraquer family, served as the honorary president. On his return to England he became ill and was unable to go to Chicago as a guest speaker of the Chicago Ophthalmological Society. However he recovered sufficiently to give the 1965 Doyne Memorial Lecture before the Oxford Ophthalmological Congress in July. His subject was "The Corneal Graft - Past, Present and Future." His lecture is a brilliant review, almost a monograph on the subject. It is noteworthy for the first part in which he covered the history of corneal grafting, a subject that had deeply interested him very early in his work. He took particular delight in his discovery, with the help of Lord Brock, of the fact that Astley Cooper on April 9, 1817 performed the first recorded free skin graft in England, and in the presence of Franz Reisinger, of Germany. Reisinger is generally considered to be the first surgeon to transplant successfully, a human cornea (1818). Following his visit to Guy's Hospital, he said that "This case (Cooper's) gave me excellent encouragement to attempt similar experiments with the cornea..." The first quarter of 1966 was spent in travel and lecturing for the most part in the United States. The rest of the year he devoted to his work as the clinical director of the Pocklington Eye Transplantation Research Unit at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, which he was instrumental in founding in 1964, as well as working with the Corneo-Plastic Unit in East Grinstead and in his large private practice. Meanwhile he was busy planning for the Second International Comeo-Plastic Conference to be held in July, 1967 and the First South African International Ophthalmological Symposium in 1968. He did not live to complete his leadership in these two important international events for he died suddenly of coronary occlusion on March 29, 1967. Benjamin Rycroft was a person who loved life with gusto and frankly rejoiced in his success. In addition to his scientific work, he relished country living on his small farm, Bishop's Lodge, near Windsor. Here he raised fine cattle, hunted, took a leading part in horse shows, played the organ for his pleasure in St George's Chapel, Windsor, and his piano at home. He was a lay officer of the Chapel, and took delight in showing its many treasures, of which he was very knowledgeable, to overseas visitors, who often were not aware of his distinction as an ophthalmic surgeon. He trained a good number of the young farmers of the area in animal husbandry and encouraged the local farm and garden shows and study groups. He was an enthusiastic fisherman. He cultivated fine roses and was proud that he was given new varieties by growers to try out before they were put on the market. His cup of life was full to the top and few drops of it were wasted.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006079
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset