First Title value, for Searching Peters, Lenrie Leopold Wilfrid (1932 - 2009)

2024-05-26T06:54:17Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2010-01-27
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000800-E000899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373012373012
Occupation General surgeon Poet
Details Lenrie Peters was a distinguished poet and surgeon. He was born in Bathurst (now Banjul), the capital of Gambia. Both his parents, Kezia and Lenrie Peters, had emigrated from Sierra Leone. His father, Lenrie, was editor of the Gambia Echo. His mother Kezia had been brought up in England. Of Lenrie’s four sisters, Bijou became a journalist, Florence, a historian, Ruby, a UN administrator, and Alaba, a movie director. He was educated at the Methodist High School in Bathurst and the Prince of Wales School in Freetown, Sierra Leone, from which he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected president of the African Students’ Union. He then went for his clinical training to University College Hospital and qualified in 1959, during which time he was also working for the BBC Africa Programme. After qualifying, Lenrie Peters did junior posts in Guildford and, after passing the FRCS, returned to Banjul in 1969 as surgeon to the government Bansang Hospital. Two years later, in partnership with Samuel J Palmer, he opened the Westfield Clinic, Gambia’s first private hospital. He began to write novels and poetry as an undergraduate. His first collection of poetry was published in Ibadan in 1964, and his first novel *The second round* (London, Heinemann) in London in 1965. His 1981 poetry collection was published to widespread acclaim, despite his criticism of his fellow-countrymen. He played an active part in politics, working for the National Consultative Committee which worked for the reestablishment of constitutional democracy. In addition to his writing and his surgical practice, Peters ran Farato Farms Export Ltd, a company that exported potatoes and mangoes to the United Kingdom. He was a fellow of the West African and the International Colleges of Surgeons, Officer of the Republic of Gambia, and in 1995 nominated as the Gambia News and Report man of the year. He was president of the Historic Commission of Monuments of The Gambia and on the board of directors of the National Library of The Gambia. He married Rosemary and was divorced in 1965. He died in Dakar, Senegal, on 27 May 2009 aged 76.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000829
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Leipoldt, Christian Fred Louis (1880 - 1947)

2024-05-26T06:54:17Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-08-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004300-E004399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376529376529
Occupation General surgeon Poet
Details Leipoldt was a man of great ability and versatility, who worked actively as a doctor and a journalist throughout his career. A South African of Dutch republican sympathies, in later life he promoted good professional relations between the Medical Associations of South Africa and Great Britain. Fully bilingual in Afrikaans and English, he made his mark as a poet in both languages. Born in 1880 at Clanwilliam, Cape Province, the son and grandson of missionaries, he was educated by his father. He won a prize for an essay in the *Boy's Own Paper*, and contributed while still a boy to the *Cape Times*. Before he was twenty he had joined the staff of the *South African News* and was correspondent of various European papers which favoured the Boer cause. He came to Europe in 1902 and paid for his roving travels by free-lance journalism. Coming to London and feeling the need of a less precarious profession he entered Guy's Hospital Medical School. He qualified in 1907, winning gold medals in surgery and medicine, and then studied children's diseases at Berlin and Graz. Coming back to London he was appointed anaesthetist to the German Hospital in 1909, took the Fellowship that summer, and edited *The Hospital*. He went to America for further postgraduate study, and after an illness recuperated by a journey through the East Indies in 1911. Back in London by 1912 he gained valuable experience as Medical Inspector of Schools at Hampstead under James Kerr, MD. Early in 1914 he obtained a post as the first Medical Inspector of Schools in the Transvaal, and found that the proper scope of the work had not been considered by the appointers. As he has recorded in his book *Bushveld Doctor*, they had intended him merely to visit schools from time to time for superficial inspection of their general condition; no provision had been even thought of for positive care of the children's health. Leipoldt was successful in promoting the necessary improvements. During the war he served as a surgeon on General Botha's staff, and in 1919 was appointed Medical Inspector of Schools in Cape Province. He joined the editorial staff of the Pretoria newspaper *Die Volkstem* in 1923, but soon afterwards resumed practice as a consultant on children's diseases at Cape Town. He was appointed organising secretary of the Medical Association of South Africa, and with W Darley-Hartley produced the first number of its *Journal* in January 1927. This journal, which subsequently (1917) became the bilingual *South African Medical Journal*, was a combination of the *Medical Journal of South Africa* and the *South African Medical Record*; and the new Medical Association was a combi¬nation of the old independent Association with the Federal Council of the various local branches of the British Medical Association in the South African Union. Leipoldt successfully carried out this work of reconciliation and co-ordination under the influence of Dr Alfred Cox, Secretary of the BMA; in 1928 he represented South Africa at the Association's Cardiff meeting. When he retired in 1944 Leopoldt left the arrangements ready for the final separation of the direct links between London and the individual branches, and the affiliation of the South African Association to the BMA as a single body. Besides his medical work, both clinical and professional, and his writing as a journalist and a poet, Leipoldt made his mark as a botanist and an ornithologist. His early Afrikaans poetry was rebellious and passionately tragic and made a deep appeal in South Africa; his later English poems were more mellow and profound. He also wrote a life of *Jan van Riebeeck*, commander of the first white settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, published in 1936. He cultivated his naturally refined taste for food and wine, and was a notably good cook. He proclaimed that wine was far more beneficial than milk, which he looked on as a dangerous vehicle for disease. Leipoldt died at the Cape on 14 April 1947, aged 67.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004346
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

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

First Title value, for Searching Peters, Lenrie Leopold Wilfrid (1932 - 2009)

First Title value, for Searching Leipoldt, Christian Fred Louis (1880 - 1947)