Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Reconstructive surgeon

First Title value, for Searching Cobbett, John Robey (1930 - 2016)

2024-05-08T20:19:42Z

by Roger Green
Publication Date 2016-02-19 2016-04-15
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Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009000-E009099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381243381243
Occupation Hand surgeon Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon Reconstructive surgeon
Details John Robey Cobbett was a consultant plastic surgeon at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, and Lewisham Hospital. He was born on 5 May 1930, the third son of Claude Racster Cobbett, a company director, and Constance Evelyn Anne Cobbett née Robey. From the age of four, following the death of his mother, his step-mother steered him into medicine. While she was not qualified herself, her father and three of her siblings were doctors. He attended Charterhouse School, where he won prizes in physics and chemistry, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His clinical studies were undertaken at the London Hospital. He was a house surgeon at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, where he saw the work being done by Sir Archibald McIndoe and was inspired to become a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. He trained in general surgery with Sir Alan Parks at the Royal Free Hospital, gaining his FRCS in 1962, and then returned to East Grinstead as a senior registrar in plastic surgery. He was appointed as a consultant plastic surgeon at East Grinstead and Lewisham in 1968. As part of the research programme at East Grinstead, John Cobbett became interested in the techniques of small vessel anastomosis. He won a Moynihan travelling scholarship in 1966, which enabled him to visit other units around the world with similar interests. He is credited as being one of the first to have completed a single stage microvascular transfer of a great toe to reconstruct a thumb in 1968. He was a founder member of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand. He served on the council of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons from 1975 to 1977, and was honorary secretary, also from 1975 to 1977. John married Pamela Irma Bower in 1952 and they had three children, Peter John Robey, Susan Robey and David Charles Robey, six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. He retired in 1995 to enjoy his hobbies of boat building, carpentry and jewellery making. Sadly, he developed Pick's disease in 2005. John Cobbett died on 19 January 2016, at the age of 85.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009060
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Acland, Robert Dyke (1941 - 2016)

2024-05-08T20:19:42Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2016-02-19 2018-11-28
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/381223381223
Occupation Plastic surgeon Reconstructive surgeon Anatomist
Details Robert Acland was a pioneer of plastic and reconstructive microsurgery. He was born in Exeter on 20 June 1941, the younger son of Sir Richard Dyke Acland, 15th baronet of Colum John, a barrister and Labour politician, and Anne Stella Acland née Alford. Acland grew up in the dower house at Killerton, Devon – his father having donated the main manor house and estate to the National Trust in 1944. He attended the local village school and then Bryanston School in Dorset, where he later said he developed an interest in breaking rules. He went on to study medicine at the London Hospital Medical School. After qualifying in 1964, he worked at Bukumbi Hospital in Mwanza, Tanzania. On his return to the UK, he was a senior house officer in Northampton, Mansfield and then Oxford. In 1969, he was a senior registrar in general surgery in Swindon, where he became interested in microsurgery after watching John Cobbett perform a microvascular anastomosis. He then spent two years at the London Hospital studying microsurgical instruments, funded by the Medical Research Council. He improved the tiny needles and threads needed for the surgery, invented the Acland micro vessel clamp and investigated how to prevent microthrombosis. Acland then trained as a plastic surgeon, as a registrar at Canniesburn Hospital in Glasgow from 1972 to 1975. In 1975, he accepted an offer to set up a microsurgery teaching laboratory at the Kleinert Kutz Hand Center in Louisville, Kentucky. He later played a key role in the founding of the University of Louisville’s fresh tissue anatomy dissection laboratory, the first of its kind in the United States. In 1983, he was appointed director and under his leadership the laboratory expanded and improved. Acland’s major work was the *Video atlas of human anatomy*, which used new technologies to capture moving three-dimensional images of structures in the body, from bone to surface anatomy. He also wrote a *Practice manual for microvascular surgery* (CV Mosby Company, St Louis, Mo, 1989), known as the ‘Red book’, a manual of microsurgical techniques, an indispensable tool for trainees. He was a founding member of the International Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery. He was married three times. In 1963 he married Sarah Wood, a fellow student at the London Hospital Medical School. She later became a psychiatrist. They had two children – Beatrice and Daniel. They divorced in 1983 and he married Susan Bishop. They had a son, Benjamin, and a daughter, Emily. They divorced in 1990 and in 1992 he married Bette Levy, a textile artist. Robert Acland died on 6 January 2016 of cholangiocarcinoma. He was 74.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009040
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Blake, Graeme Bertram (1938 - 2008)

2024-05-08T20:19:42Z

by Stewart Sinclair
Publication Date 2015-09-14 2015-09-16
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/380218380218
Occupation Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon Reconstructive surgeon
Details Graeme Bertram ("Blue") Blake was born in Palmerston North but grew up mainly in Wellington, attending Kelburn Primary School and Wellington College. After his medical intermediate year at Victoria University he studied medicine at Otago University from 1958 to 1961. He met Brenda Hayward, a fellow student in Dunedin and they married in 1962. His early post graduate years were spent in Christchurch and then in Dunedin. In 1968 the Blakes travelled to England by sea with Graeme employed as ship's assistant surgeon. In London Graeme worked in the Mount Vernon and Roehampton Hospitals and passed his English FRCS examinations. He was awarded a Commonwealth Medical Fellowship in 1971 and directed his specialist training to Plastic Surgery, gaining a lot of experience in cleft lip and palate and head and neck cancer surgery. In late 1972 he and Brenda returned to NZ with their, by then, four children. He passed his FRACS examinations and was appointed to a full-time post as Plastic Surgeon in Christchurch on the retirement of John Roy. Christchurch's Plastic Surgery Unit was then sited at Burwood Hospital where he joined Tom Milliken and Duncan Simon. Two years later he went part-time at the public hospital and began in private practice. His passion for plastic surgery was infectious and the Unit at Burwood benefited greatly from this enthusiasm. Ultimately he served as head of the Unit from 1987 to 1998 and was influential in moving the unit to Christchurch Hospital where there was better emergency support and more direct liaison with other surgical and medical specialties. Graeme served terms as president of the NZ Association of Plastic Surgeons, as a member of the RACS Plastic Surgery Board, as Chairman of the NZ Plastic Surgery training committee and as an RACS examiner. His annual March and April visits to Nepal to do cleft lip and palate surgery began in 1997 when Australian colleague and friend Charles Sharpe invited him to join a group working a Seventh Day Adventist clinic. He and Brenda found this a very gratifying experience which they looked forward to each year. Graeme retired from the hospital service in 2002 and from private practice in 2006. He quite suddenly became unwell in mid-2007 and was found to have disseminated malignant melanoma. He died at his home in Christchurch on January 7, 2008, ten days after his 69th birthday. He is survived by Brenda, daughters Prue and Katie, sons Andrew and James and 10 grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008035
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Timmons, Michael John (1949 - 2019)

2024-05-08T20:19:42Z

by Gemma Timmons
Publication Date 2019-11-27 2021-01-28
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Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009600-E009699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/382795382795
Occupation Plastic surgeon Reconstructive surgeon
Details Michael Timmons was a highly-respected plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Bradford Royal Infirmary and St Luke’s Hospital, Bradford. His special interests were cleft lip and palate surgery, and surgeries on other complex congenital problems, such as hypospadias. He was born on 17 February 1949 in Croydon to John Timmons and Lenchen Timmons née Schlegel. He studied medicine at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he wrote a ground-breaking thesis on the forearm flap. During his time at Christ’s, he was secretary for the modern pentathlon, swimming and water polo teams. He was appointed as a consultant at the Bradford Royal Infirmary and St Luke’s Hospital, and saw children in Bradford, Airedale, Halifax and Huddersfield born with a cleft lip or palate. He was also an unsung hero of the Bradford City fire of 1985, operating on and caring for many of its victims. In 1994, he led a team of colleagues to Sarajevo to assist emergency surgical services in the Yugoslav Wars. In the 1990s and 2000s, Mike travelled to Rwanda and Kenya on assessment missions for the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), the charity UK-Med and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Michael made vast contributions to medical studies and debate, publishing books on human anatomy, and publishing and reviewing several articles in medical journals. Michael was editor of the *British Journal of Plastic Surgery* from 1994 to 1997 and a council member of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Anaesthetic Surgeons (BAPRAS) from 2010 to 2012, where he was immensely respected as a wise colleague and great teacher. Michael retired from the NHS in 2016, after which he worked as an expert witness in medical legal cases. He was a regular attendee at the Doctors Updates meetings in Val d'Isère, where he always had something to contribute to the meetings and was an accomplished and personable ski companion. Michael was killed in a car accident on 4 October 2019 at the age of 70. He was survived by his wife, Ildiko (née Németh), a doctor, and their daughter, Gemma. His colleagues from across the globe paid tribute to him as ‘a real gentleman, humble, interested, intelligent, well-read, meticulous, supportive and always a pleasure to meet’. Of his work, his colleagues remarked: ‘Michael didn’t just operate on patients – he was completely committed to their wellbeing and was a surgical perfectionist. He was the sort of gentleman we so need within our specialty as parts of it hurtle seemingly towards the commercial at the expense of service.’ He will be greatly missed.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009672
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching De Geus, Jacob Johannes (1940 - 2020)

2024-05-08T20:19:42Z

by Allan Panting
Publication Date 2021-01-07 05/01/2022
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Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009900-E009999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/384133384133
Occupation Plastic surgeon Reconstructive surgeon
Details “Kua hinga te totara i te wao nui a Tane – A mighty totara has fallen in the forest of Tane” aptly describes the sudden and unexpected death of JJ de Geus some months ago. John de Geus was a great teacher, colleague and friend to many. A well-loved surgeon, colleague, employer, friend and family man, John was an excellent raconteur with a very good sense of humour and he will be missed enormously by many in various parts of the world. John was fiercely loved, admired, and respected by his family and many friends and colleagues. Jacob Johannes (known as John) de Geus was born in Indonesia, where his Dutch parents, Pieter de Geus and Jeanne Van der Made, were missionary teachers. During the Japanese occupation of Indonesia (1942-45) John together with his mother and older sisters, Ellie, Carla and Tina (and separated from their father), spent time in an internment camp where they suffered malnutrition and significant hardship. With the ending of the Second World War the family, including their father, were repatriated back in the Netherlands. Finding life tough and cold, they decided to immigrate to New Zealand. Living in Auckland John attended Avondale College, where he had first to learn English. He excelled in both sporting (he was a champion swimmer) and academic fields. Through studying hard he gained a place at Otago Medical School in Dunedin, graduating in 1964. He spent his house officer years in Wellington, and subsequently obtained his basic surgical training there. During this time he married Ros Allen, a physiotherapist. In 1971 John and Ros headed to England where John quickly gained his FRCS. The opportunity to gain some plastic surgery experience saw him spend 15 months during 1971-72 as a registrar at Queen Mary’s, Roehampton, and at Wexham Park near Slough with Magdi Saad. He then trained in Liverpool for 3 years with David Maisels, who gave him his early introduction and lifelong commitment to cleft lip and palate surgery, a skill which John brought back to Auckland. In subsequent years John frequently returned to Liverpool to visit Maisels, who had had a significant influence as a teacher and mentor and remained a life-long friend. John returned to New Zealand towards the end of 1975, obtaining a post as a registrar at Middlemore Hospital Plastic Surgery Unit. The following year he became the tutor specialist and, when Sir William Manchester retired in 1979, he was appointed as a full-time plastic surgeon. He obtained his FRACS in 1980 and became a part-time visiting plastic surgeon the same year. As a consultant Plastic Surgeon, he immersed himself in all aspects of Plastic Surgery – burns, hand surgery, and reconstruction. It was an interesting time to be a Plastic Surgeon with many new developments – muscle flaps, microsurgery, and breast reconstruction amongst others. He was involved in microsurgery, both replantation surgery and free tissue transfers, but interestingly probably also performed the last tube pedicle flap (to the neck for a burn contracture) and cross leg flap (for lower leg trauma) in NZ in 1978-79. He also helped to develop breast reconstructive surgery both at Middlemore and by invitation at Auckland Hospital. However, his greatest interest was in cleft lip and palate surgery, where he was involved in a multidisciplinary team approach with dentists, oral surgeons, speech therapists, and orthodontists. He visited New Plymouth monthly to provide cleft lip and palate services for the Taranaki region as well. In 1980 John commenced in private practice and was soon busy, reflecting his great care of patients, excellent surgical skills, and infectious personality. He fostered great respect and loyalty from his patients and staff, borne out by the fact that his secretary in 1980 was still his secretary/practice manager at the time of his retirement from private practice in 2010. John was committed to the future of Plastic Surgery and especially trainee Plastic Surgeons in New Zealand, both in the public and private sectors. He took his responsibility to train others very seriously and until his retirement was a supportive, generous and inspiring surgical mentor to a cohort of plastic surgical trainees. He was well liked and respected by his colleagues, both Plastic Surgical and others. John was very interested in aesthetic surgery; being held in high esteem on both sides of the Tasman, and elected President of the Australasian Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in 1998. He was very concerned by the practice of non-surgeons masquerading as Plastic Surgeons in NZ and damaging patients and Plastic Surgery’s reputation. John was committed to helping those in need and was an enthusiastic volunteer with Interplast Australia and NZ, making numerous trips to Suva in Fiji and to Viet Nam. In this work he inspired a young Fijian, the late Dr Semesa Matainacake FRACS, who became Fiji’s first plastic surgeon. Later Semesa Jnr followed and is now a plastic surgeon based in Suva. John eventually retired from Middlemore in 2005, having stayed on until he was sure that cleft and palate surgery was covered by a successor. He continued in private practice until 2010 when he retired from that sector. Subsequently he was invited to return to work at Middlemore Hospital to do outpatient clinics and sagely advise and supervise registrars in the Manchester See and Treat Clinic until his third retirement in 2017! Outside medicine John had many interests. He part owned a yacht and enjoyed the waters of the Waitemata in the 80s and 90s, played golf regularly as a member of the Royal Auckland Golf Club, enjoyed travel – buying a small house in the South-West of France near Toulouse and loved classical music. In later years he learned Te Reo. With a love of good food and wine, and having an excellent cellar, John was a wonderful host. John’s generosity cannot be overstated and there are many people, both within his immediate family and further beyond, who were recipients of his generosity and support. During his last decade John’s physical health began to decline, possibly a consequence of the nutritional deprivation he experienced during the Second World War. Despite that he remained active, walking regularly, attending the gym and playing golf. He even climbed Mt Vesuvius! struggling to the top with career-long friend Norm Olbourne. He is survived by his loving daughters, sons, daughters and sons-in-law Suzanne, Stuart, Sarah , Kevin, Tom, Penny, Joe, Jess, Liz, Gerhard, Troy , Kristen, and grandchildren Liv, Jacob, Sophia, Ted, Frank, and Beckett.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009902
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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