First Title value, for Searching George, Phyllis Ann (1925 - 2017)

2024-05-10T13:50:00Z

by Lionel Gracey
Publication Date 2017-04-21 2018-11-21
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Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009300-E009399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381515381515
Occupation Breast Surgeon General surgeon Thyroid surgeon
Details Phyllis George was a consultant general surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital, London and the first woman to be elected as vice president of the Royal College of Surgeons. She was born in Sedgley, Staffordshire on 18 February 1925, but, though she later travelled widely, she remained at heart a Londoner all her life. She was educated at City of London School for Girls. There was no tradition of medicine in her family, but Phyllis, in her senior school years, felt the vocation to become a doctor and so proceeded to the Royal Free School of Medicine, then the only school exclusively for female students. After qualifying in 1948, she would have been expected to train to become a GP or possibly a hospital physician. Phyllis, however, had other ideas. She had always been very practical with her hands and saw her future in surgery, a field which was then almost exclusively occupied by men. Having obtained the challenging fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1953, she was appointed as a registrar and thereafter a senior registrar to Geraldine Barry, the only female general surgeon on the staff of the Royal Free Hospital. Barry was a specialist in thyroid surgery, having been trained by the great Cecil Joll. During her registrarships, Phyllis spent some time at the Memorial Hospital in New York, researching malignant melanomas. The senior surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital at that time was George Qvist, a giant of a man, and Hallet medal prize winner at the Royal College of Surgeons. He strongly believed that a general surgeon should be just that; a surgeon capable of coping with any surgical contingency anywhere in the body at any time of day or night. He practised what he preached, so that his lists might move easily from a thoracotomy and mitral valvotomy to an abdominal gastrectomy or colectomy. He resisted specialisation and academic departments. Phyllis, however, thought differently: she saw the future to be in specialisation. She recognised that surgery was as much a team effort and that, for best results, fully trained teams of theatre staff and ward nursing staff were as important as the actual surgeons. Time has proved her right. Having worked as her registrar for some years, I can confirm that there were almost no complications, morbidity or mortality from her operations. Before the advent of liver transplantation, the only surgical treatment for portal hypertension was the delicate and dangerous operation of portacaval shunt. Sheila Sherlock, the world renowned hepatologist, entrusted all this surgery to Phyllis and her trust was not misplaced. On Barry’s retirement in 1963, Phyllis was appointed to the consultant staff at the Royal Free Hospital. There she blossomed, continuing her specialised thyroid and breast surgery, and showing a particular aptitude and clarity in teaching medical students and junior staff. She had a thoughtful and wise head in medical committees, and this was widely recognised when she was elected president of the section of surgery at the Royal Society of Medicine, and then, in 1979, became the first female member of the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1988, she became the first female vice president. She might well have become the first female president had not age imposed her retirement. Outside the hospital, Phyllis lead an active and varied social life. Her strong Christian faith sustained her throughout her life. She was very family orientated, and suffered badly after the death of her father in a fire. She loved cooking, and held many memorable parties for her friends and colleagues in her house opposite the new Royal Free Hospital in Pond Street. As a registrar, she had lived in a flat a few yards from the old hospital in Gray’s Inn Road, so she never had to commute and was always easily available and extremely punctual for all her obligations. In her later years, Phyllis moved to a care home in St John’s Wood, where she died peacefully on 6 April 2017 aged 92. She will be deeply missed and ever remembered by all who knew her.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009332
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Mitchell, Robert Mervyn (1925 - 2019)

2024-05-10T13:50:00Z

by Chris Mitchell
Publication Date 2021-07-05
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009900-E009999
Occupation General surgeon Thyroid surgeon Breast surgeon
Details Robert Mitchell qualified in Medicine at the University of Otago gaining the Gold Medal in Anatomy and the Senior Scholarship in Medicine. He undertook the BMedSci and his degree thesis, postnatal development in the rat adrenal, was published in 1948 and attracted interest. This demonstrated his early enthusiasm and aptitude for research. He was awarded a New Zealand Universities Travelling Scholarship to the United Kingdom and worked his passage over as a ship’s doctor in early 1952. He was employed as a Registrar at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. Whilst in England, he obtained the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. On returning to New Zealand in 1953 he worked as a Senior Surgical Registrar, later Senior Lecturer in the Department of Surgery, University of Otago. During this time he developed an interest in renal research demonstrated through publications with Michael Woodruff. In 1959 he became Reader in Surgery at the University of Queensland and surgeon in the Royal Brisbane Hospital. His enthusiasm for medical research led him in 1964 to be awarded a Carnegie Travel Grant to study surgical techniques and the teaching of surgery in medical schools in the United States and Canada. This he combined with a sabbatical year as Research Fellow in Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Harvey Cushing Fellow in the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. In the Peter Bent Brigham, with Joseph Murray’s team, he was amongst the international vanguard of the rapidly developing research into preventing rejection in renal transplantation. This work included early study of whether antilymphocyte serum was effective as an immunosuppressive agent for homografts. The work he did in Boston resulted in papers published with Joseph Murray (subsequently 1990 Nobel 1 prizewinner for the development of kidney and bone-marrow transplants) and focused much of his subsequent surgical career. Following his return to Brisbane in 1965 he worked in the Princess Alexandra Hospital and was Acting Professor of Surgery University of Queensland. In 1967 he was appointed to the Foundation Chair of Surgery at the University of Tasmania, a position he held until 1977. During this time he undertook responsibility for setting up the new Department of Surgery in Hobart. He performed the first renal transplantations in Tasmania. In 1977 he moved to a Chair of Surgery at the University of New South Wales where, at St George Hospital, he specialised in thyroid and breast surgery. His other roles included Director of the Australian Kidney Foundation, Chairman of the Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee of the Australian Kidney Foundation, Member of the Examinations Committee of the Australian Medical Council, Chairman of the Cancer Care Committee at St George Hospital, Member of the National Health & Medical Research Council Scientific Committee and President of the Surgical Research Society. Following his retirement from surgery in 1987, he was Visiting Surgeon and Chairman of the Quality Committee of the Division of Surgery at St George Hospital. In 2001 he became Emeritus Professor, University of New South Wales. He undertook medico-legal consultant work in Sydney from 1988 until he moved to his retirement home in Ballina in 2002. He retained his life-long interest and devotion to medical research but was then also able to more fully enjoy his oil painting, boating and international travel. Robert Mitchell was born in Thames, New Zealand on 6th December 1925, to parents Jack and Florence (née Hockenhull). He was the eldest of three children. Through hard work and a love of learning he became Dux of Thames High School and won a scholarship to study in Auckland from where he was successful in getting into the University of Otago. His father Jack was a school woodwork teacher and Robert became the first member of his family to study at university. A love of woodworking and appreciation of practical skills was his inheritance from his father and remained with him throughout his life. Robert Mitchell was widely regarded as a concerned and caring practitioner and by his students as a fine teacher. His wife Ruth (née Adams) was his contemporary at medical school and an accomplished mountaineer who had been one of the four who had climbed the South Ridge of Mt Cook for the first time in 1948. She later excelled in the field of Pathology and electron microscopy. She pre-deceased him in 1990. They had three children. Robert Mitchell passed away peacefully on 20th September 2019 in Ballina.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009986
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

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First Title value, for Searching George, Phyllis Ann (1925 - 2017)

First Title value, for Searching Mitchell, Robert Mervyn (1925 - 2019)