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Charles Joseph Singer (MA, DM, D.Litt., Hon D.Sc., FRCP) was born on 2 November 1876 in London. He studied at University College London, and from 1896-99 he studied zoology at Oxford, graduating BA, BCh. In 1903 he qualified from St Mary's Hospital Medical School MRCS LRCP. He gained other degrees honours during his career: MA MD; FRCP; Honorary DSc. From 1904-1908 Singer held various hospital posts in England and abroad, including Sussex County Hospital; Brighton; Government House, Singapore; Abyssinia (Medical Officer to expedition); Malta and Salonica, where he returned during the First World War when he served with the RAMC.

Singer held various posts throughout his career: Registrar to the Cancer Hospital, London; Physician to Dreadnought Hospital; Lecturer in history of medicine at University College London, as well as work abroad, including Visiting Professor at University of California, Berkley.

He married Dorothea Waley Cohen, eldest daughter of Nathaniel L Cohen and Julia M Waley in 1910, with whom he was awarded the Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society of America.

He held a number of secretaryships and presidential posts, including Honorary Secretary of the Royal Society of Medicine (Historical Section), 1916-1919; President RSM (Historical Section), 1920-1922; President of Third International Congress of History of Medicine, 1922 and President of Académie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences. He retired in 1942.

Charles Singer died on 10 June, 1960 at home in Par, Cornwall. Dorothea Singer died on 24 June, 1964.

Evans was born in Birmingham in 1884. He was a pupil and collaborator of E.H. Starling, with whom he worked at University College, London, 1911-1916, and at the Royal Army Medical College at Millbank, 1916-1918, where Starling was in charge of the Anti-gas Department. After a brief stay at Leeds University as Professor of Experimental Physiology, he returned to London to work in the department of H.H. Dale at the newly established National Institute for Medical Research, 1919-1922. He was Professor of Physiology at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, London, 1923-1926, and Jodrell Professor of Physiology, University College, London, 1926-1949. During the Second World War he worked at the Chemical Defence Experimental Station at Porton Down, Wiltshire and on retirement from the Jodrell Chair he was given research facilities at Porton. He died in 1968. He was elected FRS in 1925 and knighted in 1951.

Charles Montague Fletcher, the son of Sir Walter Morley Fletcher (see PP/WMF), was born in 1911. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and was in the team that won the University Boat Race in 1933. He studied medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital where he graduated in 1937.

Whilst at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, as a house physician and research student to Professor Leslie Witts, Fletcher was involved in the early clinical investigations of penicillin. He administered the first injection of penicillin to a human patient in 1941. His name appears on the tablet in the penicillin memorial rose garden outside Oxford Botanical Gardens.

He joined the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit in South Wales as Director in 1945 until 1952. It was here that he became aware of the differences in interpreting the same chest x-rays by different observers - "observer error". To ensure better standardisation he designed a semi-quantitive scoring system which is now used worldwide. For his work on pneumoconiosis he was awarded the CBE in 1952.

In 1952, Fletcher wished to return to general medicine. Sir John McMichael invited him to join as a consultant physician and a reader in clinical epidemiology (1952 - 1973) at the Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital, where he later became Professor (Emeritus) of Clinical Epidemiology, 1973 -1976. He spent 20 years studying the history of bronchitis and emphysema, and showed conclusively that chronic bronchitis sufferers would improve if they stopped smoking rather than take antibiotics.

From 1958 until 1965 he presented the BBC series Your Life In Their Hands and Television Doctor, 1969-1970. He continued as a medical advisor with the BBC until 1972. He was criticised by the medical profession for giving information to patients concerning their illnesses as it was deemed as harmful to the patient.

Fletcher was instrumental in founding Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) (see SA/ASH) and was their first chairman (1971 - 1978) and later their president (1979 - 1995). In April 1995 he gave an account of the early years of ASH to the symposium "Ashes to Ashes".

He retired in 1976, spending much if his time in the Isle of White. He died on 15 Dec 1995 after suffering a stroke.

Charles McMoran Wilson, Lord Moran of Manton (1882-1977) had a long and active life. He was a prominent figure in the medical world, firstly as Dean of St Mary's Hospital Medical School (1920-1945), when he was responsible for rebuilding the premises and promoting the school as an undergraduate honours school. During this period he contributed to the debate on medical education, notably in his article `The Student in Irons', published in the BMJ in March 1932. He was elected president of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), London, in April 1941, narrowly defeating the traditionalist Lord Horder, and was re-elected annually until he stepped down in favour of Russell Brain in 1950. He promoted the influence of the RCP as an independent voice for the consultants in the negotiations over the introduction of the National Health Service. He was created a baron in the New Year honours of 1943 and made his maiden speech in June of that year in the debate on the Beveridge report. He spoke powerfully in many of the debates on the NHS and was also a member of the second Spens Committee, which devised the merit awards system for consultants. He was the first chairman of the Awards Committee from 1949 to 1962 and with his vice-chairman, Sir Horace Hamilton, travelled extensively every year, working on the detail of individual recommendations for awards.

In addition to his role in medical politics he published two influential books. The Anatomy of Courage, published in February 1945, a study of the psychological effects of war, was a result of his experiences as a medical officer in the First World War and his work on shell-shock at a stationary hospital in Boulogne and later in Cambridge, where he met his wife, Dorothy Dufton. Throughout the 1930s he lectured to army colleges on morale in war and eventually brought all these thoughts together in the course of the Second World War, when he was travelling with Winston Churchill as his doctor. It is probably as Winston Churchill's doctor, that Lord Moran is best remembered and his second book Winston Churchill: Struggle for Survival, published fifteen months after his famous patient's death, was the subject of much controversy about the ethics of a doctor publishing information about a patient.

For further biographical information see Churchill's Doctor : A Biography of Lord Moran, by Richard Lovell (London: Royal Society of Medicine, 1992).

Leonard Colebrook's work was chiefly concerned with the control of the spread of infection in hospitals and the treatment of infected wounds. During the First World War he worked in Boulogne with Sir Almroth Wright, and advocated using the patient's inborn resistance to fight infection in wounds, using hypertonics rather than antiseptics which he argued were too harmful to the patient's tissues. In 1930 he was appointed to Queen Charlotte's Hospital where he developed the use of sulphonamides in the treatment of puerperal sepsis. In 1939, as bacteriologist to the Army in France, Colebrook introduced the dusting of wounds with sulphonamide powder, which greatly reduced the incidence of sepsis. In 1940 he joined an MRC team working on septicity of burns and scalds, and in 1943 went on to organise the burns unit at the Birmingham Accident Hospital, creating special dressing rooms with filtered air and near sterile conditions. After his marriage in 1946 he and his wife, Vera, embarked on a campaign leading to the passage of the Fireguards Act in 1952, and continued to campaign for non-flammable night clothing. In 1954 Colebrook's biography of Almroth Wright was published.

Sir Albert Ruskin Cook was born, 1870; Graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge. B.A, 1893; Graduated from St Bartholomew's Hospital. MB, 1895; Went to Uganda with Church Missionary Society mission, 1896; Established Mengo Hospital, 1897; MD, 1901; A.R. Cook and J.H. Cook were first to diagnose sleeping sickness in East Africa, 1901; President of Uganda Branch, British Medical Association, 1914-1918; Founded school for African medical assistants, 1917; Lady Coryndon Maternity Training School founded, 1921; retired, 1934; President of Uganda Branch, BMA, 1936-1937; Represented Uganda at coronation, 1937; Died in Kampala, Uganda, 1951.

Lady Cook, CMG OBE MD (1863-1938), was matron of Mengo Hospital 1897-1911, was involved in the foundation of the Lady Coryndon Maternity Training School and founded the Nurses Training College in 1931.

Carlos Paton Blacker (1895-1975), MC, GM, MA, MD, FRCP, was a psychiatrist, and served as Secretary of the Eugenics Society 1931-1961. Born, 1895; Educated at Eton; Officer in Coldstream Guards, decorated with MC, twice wounded, 1915-1919; Balliol College Oxford, 1919-1922; Medical training, Guy's Hospital, 1923; MA, BM, BCh, MRCP, 1927; Registrar, Department of Psychological Medicine, Guy's Hospital, 1927-1936; DM, 1931; General Secretary, Eugenics Society, 1931-1952; Joins staff of Maudsley Hospital, 1936-1960; Regimental Medical Officer to 2nd Battalion, 1940-1942; Seconded to Ministry of Health as Adviser on Population and Medico-Social Problems, 1944; Honorary Secretary, Eugenics Society, 1952-1961; Consultant to Ex-Services Mental Welfare Society, 1962-1972; died, 1975.

Born, 1890; educated at Rugby School; New College, Oxford; second-class degree in physiology and entered Guy's Hospital with a scholarship, 1912; dispatch rider, First World War, 1914; wounded, Sep 1914; returned to Guy's Hospital to complete his clinical studies, 1914; commissioned in the Royal Army Medical Corps and posted as medical officer to the Royal Flying Corps squadron at Farnborough, 1915; MRCP, 1916; returned to France to serve with 101 field ambulance and as medical officer of the 1st Middlesex regiment, 1916; resident medical officer at the National Hospital, Queen Square, London, 1919; assistant physician for nervous diseases at Guy's Hospital, 1920; Radcliffe travelling fellowship, USA, 1920; National Hospital, Queen Square, 1926; consultant in neurology to the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital, 1926; civilian consultant in neurology to the RAF, 1934; consultant in neurology, Central Medical Establishment at Halton, 1939; returned to his hospital and private practice after the Second World War; Sims travelling professor, 1953; retired from hospital practice, 1955; retired from practice, 1963; died, 1978.

Born, 1899; Educated Perth Academy; University of St. Andrews; Assistant Medical Officer, Murray Royal, Perth, 1923; Lecturer in Epidemiology, 1924; Assistant in Bacteriology, St Andrews. Worked with Professors WJ Tulloch and WL Burgess; produced two MRC monographs with them, 1927; Research Associate, Connaught Laboratories, Toronto, 1931; Lecturer in Epidemiology, School of Hygiene, University of Toronto, 1932; Secretary of School of Hygiene, 1935-1945; Member of joint US-Canadian Commission on cattle industry and pests. Helped to write Memoranda for the National Research Council of Canada, 1942-1946; Associate Professor of Virus Infections, School of Hygiene, 1946; Elected President of the American Society of Bacteriologists and awarded US Typhus Commission Medal, 1946; Returned to England to work on cancer tumours at Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratory, Mill Hill, 1947; In charge of laboratory, Mill Hill, 1949-1957; retired, 1964; died, 1978.

Ann Gwendolen Dally was born in Marylebone, London in 1926. Her father, Claud Mullins, was one of the founders of the Family Planning Association and of the Marriage Guidance Council. Ann won an Open Exhibition in Modern History to Somerville College, Oxford, and graduated in 1946. She then completed a year's service at the War Office in Germany and Austria. She began her medical training at St Thomas's Hospital in 1947, where she was one of the first three women to be offered a place for the first year course. She was a Nicholas Research Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and Weir Research Fellow of the Wandsworth Hospital Group. She qualified MB, BS in 1953. She also gained a diploma in Obstetrics and experience in general practice. She married Peter Dally in 1950 and went on to have six children. In 1969 Ann and Peter divorced and she married Philip Egerton in 1979.

She worked in several areas of medicine, including posts as a research registrar in general medicine, a medical journalist, radio psychiatrist in a phone in programme for Radio London for nearly 10 years, an editor of a paediatric journal (Maternal and Child Care) and in general practice (Family Doctor). She also wrote a regular column for the Sunday Telegraph and Evening News. Despite never training formally in psychiatry, in partnership with her ex-husband, Dr. Peter Dally, Ann practiced psychiatry in private practice. Peter and Ann were in practice together from 1968 until 1994. She was an associate of The Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Ann's main area of interest was families, mothers, babies and adolescents. It was this experience of mothers and children that led to an understanding of many psychiatric problems. Whilst sharing a private psychiatric practice with Peter, she became interested in drug addicts and their problems. She officially stopped treating drug addicts in September 1987.

In 1987 Ann was charged by the GMC of irresponsible prescribing, which was found not to be proved. The GMC found Ann guilty of professional misconduct and directed that for a period of 14 months, her registration be conditional on compliance with the requirement that she should not prescribe or possess controlled drugs. The GMC restored her full, unconditional registration at the end of the 14 month conditional period. An appeal was made to the Privy Council on the grounds that if the general charge was held not to be proven, this must imply that her treatment of patients was not culpable. The Privy Council dismissed the appeal against the GMC.

Ann Dally wrote many books including An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Medicine; A Doctor's Story; The Morbid Streak: Destructive Aspects of the Personality; Mothers - Their Power and Influence; and Women Under The Knife: A History of Surgery.

Dally was latterly a research fellow at The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine. She died on 24 March 2007.

Peter was born in 1923 and retired from private practice in 1994. Peter undertook his medical training at St. Thomas' Hospital too. He retired from the Westminster Hospital in 1988 at the age of 65 but continued with the private practice until the house in Devonshire Place was sold in 1994.

Daly was born on 14 April 1893 in Leamington Spa and educated at Rossall School, 1906-1911, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 1911-1914, and St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, qualifying M.B., B.Ch., Cambridge, in 1918. In addition to completing his medical training, he also served with the Royal Navy Air Service during the First World War. Daly was Assistant in the Physiology Department, University College, London, 1919-1923, and Lecturer in Experimental Physiology, University of Wales, Cardiff, 1923-1927. He held Chairs in Physiology at the Universities of Birmingham, 1927-1933, and Edinburgh, 1933-1947, seconded 1943-1945, as Director of the Medical Research Council's Physiological Laboratory, Armoured Fighting Vehicle Training School, Lulworth, Dorset. He became the first Director of the Agricultural Research Council's Institute of Animal Physiology, Babraham, Cambridge, 1948-1958. He continued in active research in retirement as Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, 1958-1962, and with the financial support from the National Institutes of Health, USA, 1962-1965, at the University Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford. Daly was a leading authority on pulmonary and bronchial systems. He died on 8 February 1974. He was elected FRS in 1943.

Born in London 14 Nov 1910. Educated at Westminster School. MA 1940, MB BCh 1942 Cambridge, MA 1949, DM 1955 Oxford, FRCP 1963, FRCPath 1963, DSc 1961 London, FRCPsych 1971, FRCS 1973, FLS. After studying medicine at Cambridge Daniel went on to become House Physician and House Surgeon Charing Cross Hospital and then Graduate Assistant in Pathology, Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. He was Honorary Consultant Pathologist at the Radcliffe, 1948-1956 where he taught in Sir Hugh Cairns' neurosurgery unit. He was also Senior Research Officer University of Oxford, 1949-1956. In 1956 he was appointed Professor of Neuropathology at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London 1956 where he remained until his retirement in 1977. He held various other posts during his career including Honorary Consultant in Neuropathology to the Army at Home, 1952-1977, Emeritus Physician Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals from 1976, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Applied Physiology and Surgical Science, RCSEng from 1976, and Emeritus Fellow, Leverhulme Trust 1978-1980.

Daniel was an active and long-term member or honorary member of many medical and scientific societies including the British Neuropathological Society (ex-president 1963-1964), Harveian Society (ex-president 1966), Royal Society of Medicine, The Osler Club, Physiological Society, Association of British Neurologists, Medical Society of London (ex-president 1987-1988 and honorary librarian 1985-1990). Amongst the awards Daniel received were the Prosect Medal of the RCSEdin, John Hunter Medal and triennial prize of the College and the Erasmus Wilson lectureship. Daniel died on 19 November 1998.

Sir (William) Richard Shaboe Doll qualified in medicine at St Thomas' Hospital Medical School, University of London, in 1937. After five years military service, he started research in the field of gastroenterology with Sir Francis Avery Jones at Central Middlesex Hospital in 1946. During the next twenty years, he contributed many papers on the aetiology and treatment of peptic ulcer.

In 1948, he joined the Medical Research Council's Statistical Unit at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine under Sir Austin Bradford Hill, with the primary objective of investigating the cause(s) of a dramatic increase in the mortality of lung cancer. On Bradford Hill's retirement in 1961, he took over the directorship of the Unit and continued in this post until his appointment, in 1969, as Regius Professor of Medicine in the University of Oxford. Ten years later, in 1979, he became the first Warden of Green College, Oxford, a new College established primarily to serve the special interests of clinical medicine at Oxford. Whilst at Oxford, he directed the Cancer Epidemiology Unit established by the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. He continued to work as an honorary member of Sir Richard Peto's research group at Oxford after his retirement in 1983.

Doll's principal research interests were the effects of smoking, ionising radiation, oral contraceptives, and the occupational hazards of cancer. In 1981, he published with Richard Peto a report on the Causes of Cancer at the request of the Office of Technology Assessment of the US Congress. His pre-eminence in the field of epidemiology led to a steady stream of honours and lecture opportunities across the world. He received 15 honorary degrees from the universities at home and abroad, and a number of awards including the Royal Society's Royal Medal, the BMA Gold Medal, General Motors Mott Prize and the UN Award for Cancer Research. Sir Richard Doll was a Foreign Associate of the American Association of Arts and Science and received his OBE in 1956, FRS in 1966, was knighted in 1971, and became a Companion of Honour in 1996. In 2002 Doll was elected a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. Doll died on 24th July 2005, aged 92.

In 1965 Dorothy Silberston convened the first meeting of the Relatives of Mentally Ill Patients in Cambridge. Up until 1972 she was secretary of this organisation whose members aims were to learn more about mental illness, support each other and to campaign for health service improvements. Her involvement originated from personal experiences, her daughter Catherine having been diagnosed and hospitalized with schizophrenia in 1961. Dorothy was one of the 400 people who contacted John Pringle after reading his article, 'A Case of Schizophrenia', in The Times, May 1970. She went on to become one of the founder members of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship. During the 1970s she contributed to the NSF publication Living with Schizophrenia by the Relatives and helped draft NSF comments on the DHSS Review of the Mental Health Act 1959 and their memorandum to the Royal Commission on the NHS (1977).

Between 1982 and 1997 she was member and later chair of the NSF Medico-legal Committee and Honorary Parliamentary Officer and did significant work on the Mental Health (Amendment) Bill introduced in 1981 by Lord Mottistone. Between 1982 and 1995 she held positions as an elected NSF Council member, co-opted Council member and Vice Chairman. From 1996 to 2001 Dorothy Silberston was Honorary Vice-President of the NSF. She resigned from the Fellowship after it changed its name to Rethink.

Dorothy Silberston was very active in local politics and the community. In 1960-1961 she helped establish the Cambridge Association for the Advancement of State Education and from 1969-1973 she served as a Cambridge County Councillor (Labour). She was awared the MBE for her work in connection with the NSF.

From 1973-1980 Dorothy Silberston held the post of Keeper of Nuffield Place, former home of William Morris, Lord Nuffield. In her latter years she continued her involvement with the house (designed by Oswald Partridge Milne in 1914), its history, and survival as a place of historical interest open to the public. She died in 2006.

The National Schizophrenia Fellowship, a registered charity, was founded by journalist John Pringle in 1972 with the aim of acting as the national organisation for all matters concerning people with experience of schizophrenia and related conditions, their families, carers and dependants. Its origins dated back to the public response to an open letter by Pringle to the Times in May 1970 in which he described his own experience of dealing with schizophrenia in a family member. The letter, as well as describing the huge difficulties faced by carers, highlighted problems caused by the closure of large hospitals and lack of adequate community services.

The NSF National Office was based at Kingston upon Thames. It was supplemented by regional offices and Regional Committees, Project Commiteees and a network over 150 local groups. The Groups were run by volunteer co-ordinators, mostly relatives caring for an individual suffering from schizophrenia. Local groups met regularly and organised a range of activities to inform local people, provide support, influence local professionals and liaise with other agencies. The NSF was financed by charitable grants and donations, fund-raising, Local and Health Authority contracts, legacies and members' subscriptions, with about 5% of total income received directly from central government.

By the early 1990s the NSF had over 6000 members, ran over 150 regional projects in the housing, employment and day care fields all over the country. An Advice and Advocacy Service was also provided, answering thousands of queries each year on all apsects of the care and treatment of severe mental illness as well as welfare benefits, carers' problems, accommodation, holidays and other related issues.

The NSF campaigned vigorously for the rate of mental hospital closures to be slowed to allow for the proper development of community facilities for mentally ill people, and for more trained social workers and community psychiatric nurses as well as small domestic style units for those unable to cope outside hospital.

National conferences were held regularly as part of a national and regional programme of training to raise awareness of mental illness. Courses were run for social workers, psychiatrists, GPs, police, and the probation service. The NSF changed its name to Rethink in July 2002. At this point the organisation altered its focus to encompass all severe mental illnesses. Rethink currently have a membership of over 8300. The Head office is in Finsbury Square, London.

Edgar Ashworth Underwood (1899-1980) was a medical man specialising in public health before making a second career in medical history. Born, 1899; Schooling in Glasgow/Dumfries Academy; Served with Cameron Highlanders in France, 1917-1919; University of Glasgow MA, MB,Ch B,BSc, 1924; Physician at Western Infirmary, Glasgow, 1924; Diploma in Public Health (DPH), 1926; Assistant M O H in Glasgow and County of Lanark, 1926; Deputy M O H County of Rotherham, 1929; Medical Superintendant of Oakwood Sanitarium, Rotherham, 1929-1931; Deputy M O H, City of Leeds, 1932-1934; Lecturer in Public Health, University of Leeds; M O H, Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch, 1934-1937; M O H, Chief School Medical Officer, County Borough of West Ham, 1937-1945; MD, 1936; Fellow of Royal Society of Medicine, 1933; Honorary Secretary of Royal Society of Medicine, 1942-1948; President of Royal Society of Medicine, 1948-1950; Director, Wellcome Historical Medical Museum and Library, 1946-1964; President of the History Section, RSM, 1948-1950; retired, 1964; died, 1980.

Chain was born in 1906 in Berlin where his Russian-born father, an industrial chemist, had settled. Both his parents were Jewish. He graduated in chemistry and physiology from the Friedrich-Wilhelm University, Berlin, Germany in 1930 and undertook research in the chemical department of the Institute of Pathology at the Charité Hospital, Berlin, 1930-1933. He was a talented pianist and music competed with chemistry in his thoughts about a career. In 1933 Chain became one of the many refugees from Nazi Germany, finding refuge in Britain. From 1933 to 1935 he worked in Cambridge at the School of Biochemistry under Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, moving in 1935 to the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford. Here he took part in the research and development of penicillin for which he shared with A. Fleming and H.W. Florey the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945. In 1948 he moved to the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy as Scientific Director of the International Research Centre for Chemical Microbiology, remaining there until 1964 when, after protracted negotiations, he took up the Chair of Biochemistry at Imperial College, London. He retired in 1973 but retained Research Fellowships until his death in 1979. He was elected FRS in 1949 and knighted in 1969.

Professor Ernest Basil Verney (1894-1967), MD, FRCP, FRS, was a physiologist and pharmacologist. An outline of his life and career follows: Born 1894; Exhibition to Downing College, Cambridge, 1913; First class honours part 1 natural science tripos, 1916; Shuter scholar, St Bartholomew's Hospital, anatomy and physiology, 1916-1918; Served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1918-1919; MB, BChir (Cantab) MRCP (London), 1920; Assistant to E.H. Starling in the Institute of Physiology, University College London, 1921; Married Ruth Eden Conway, 1923; Assistant to Professor T R Elliott in University College Hospital Medical School, 1924; Chair of Pharmacology at University College London, 1926; Acquitted of charge of using stolen dog in research, 1926; Breakdown in health, 1930; Sheild Reader in Pharmacology in Cambridge, Fellow of Darwin College, 1934; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1936; First Sheild Professor of Pharmacology, Cambridge, 1946; Honorary DSc, University of Melbourne, 1956; Visiting Professor at the University of Melbourne Baly medal of the Royal College of Physicians Honorary member of the Physiological Society, 1957; Retired; Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology, Cambridge, 1961; Personal chair at University of Melbourne, work on adrenal secretions, 1961-1964; Died 1967.

Sir Edward Eric 'Bill' Pochin K.B.E. (1909-1990) was a scientist of international stature: a physician, endocrinologist, radiobiologist , and an acclaimed authority on radiological protection. In his clinical career he was involved with the care of patients, teaching and research, and subsequently with development of protection techniques and the setting of standards and their application.

Born, 1895; Educated in Lausanne, Switzerland, 1910-1914; Studies medicine at St Mary's London, and becomes involved with Student Christian Movement, 1916-1922; sets up in general practice in Tavistock, 1922; Starts a Birth Control Clinic in Aldershot, 1932; Sets up the Aldershot and District Women's Welfare Centre and starts a Birth Control Clinic in Guildford, 1934; Sets up Sex Education Centre in Aldershot, 1936; Involved in the beginning of the Marriage Guidance Council, 1937; sets up private practice in Harley Street, 1937; Moves his practice from Harley Street to Baker Street, 1948; died, 1988.

Paul Ehrlich was a leading medical researcher of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1908. He is best remembered for 'Dr Ehrlich's Magic Bullet', Compound 606, the arsephanemine drug salvarsan which was a cure for syphilis, discovered in 1909.

Sir Ernest Laurence Kennaway (1881-1958) M.A., M.D., D.S.C., F.R.C.P., F.R.S, was Professor of Experimental Pathology at the Royal Cancer Hospital (Royal Marsden Hospital) and Director of the Chester Beatty Institute from 1928 to 1946.

Eileen Palmer, Olive Johnson, and Edith How-Martyn worked closely together in the British birth control movement during a period from the 1920s to the 1950s. How-Martyn had been active in this cause since before the First World War. They were all involved with the Birth Control International Information Centre and Birth Control Worldwide organisations during the 1930s, and Palmer accompanied How-Martyn on one of her several tours of India to promote birth control. How-Martyn undertook a number of other foreign tours, before emigrating to Australia with her husband around 1940. There is an entry for How-Martyn in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and some obituaries and other biographical material in A.8.

Career summary: Born 6 June 1850, at Hornsey, son of J W Schäfer of Highgate and Hamburg; educated University College London (medal for Physiology). 1871 first Sharpey Scholar, University College London. 1874 Assistant Professor of Physiology, University College London. 1877 published A course of practical Histology. 1878 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; married Maud Dixey. 1878-1881 Fullerian Professor, Royal Institution. 1883 Jodrell Professor, University College London; published his first researches in cerebral localisation. 1885 published Essentials of Histology. 1894 discovery with George Oliver of the effect of extract of the suprarenal gland. 1895-1900 General Secretary, British Association for the Advancement of Science. 1896 death of Maud Schafer, his first wife. 1897 awarded the Baly Medal by the Royal College of Physicians. 1898-1902 edited Advanced textbook of Physiology, to which he also contributed. 1899 elected to the Edinburgh Chair of Physiology. 1900 married Ethel Maude Roberts. 1902 awarded the Royal Medal by the Royal Society. 1903 gave papers on artificial respiration to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 1908 founded the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Physiology and edited it until 1933. 1909 awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the Royal Life-Saving Society (for the Schafer method' of artificial respiration). 1911 awarded the De Cyon Prize by the Accademia della Scienza, Bologna. 1912 President, British Association for the Advancement of Science: gave a controversial address onLife, its nature, origin and maintenance'; published Quain's Elements of Anatomy Vol II Pt I and Experimental Physiology. 1913 knighted; Lane Medical Lecturer, Stanford. 1915 death in action of his younger son Tom. 1916 published The endocrine organs; death of his elder son Jack at Jutland. c. 1916 death of elder daughter Marjory. 1918 added Sharpey to his name in memory of Professor William Sharpey. 1922 awarded the Neill Medal by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 1923 President, International Congress of Physiology. 1924 awarded the Copley Medal by the Royal Society. 1927 published History of the Physiological Society; resigned his Chair at Edinburgh: became Emeritus Professor; Volume 23 of Quarterly Journal of Experimental Physiology produced in his honour with papers by his former pupils worldwide. Died 29 March 1935, aged 85.

Dr Henry Foy was born in July 1900, and went to Oxford in 1918 to study physiology under Julian Huxley. After graduation he taught biology at Gresham's School, Holt and Malvern College. In 1925 he took up a teaching post at Imperial College, Trinidad, where he became involved in a leper colony in Manaus on the Upper Amazon and developed a keen interest in tropical diseases. In 1932 he was appointed to run the League of Nations Malaria Research Laboratory in Salonika, where Dr Athena Kondi was his laboratory assistant. She had gained her MB from Athens University in 1930, and her MD in 1933.

The League of Nations Research Laboratory was funded initially by the Rockefeller Foundation, and when funding ended in 1937, Foy gained Wellcome Trust funds via Sir Henry Dale. The laboratory was extended, with beds provided for clinical research on patients, under the care of Kondi. Foy and Kondi were to work together for the rest of their lives, so closely that they were known as 'Foyandkondi' by the local people in Nairobi. When Greece was invaded in 1941, they left to work first at the South Africa Institute for Medical Research in Johannesburg and then, after a brief return to Greece, their laboratory was established in Nairobi in 1948. Foy believed Nairobi provided excellent opportunities for the study of malaria and sickle cell anaemia - a condition they had begun to study in Greece at the end of the war. Despite being based in Nairobi, Foy and Kondi made lengthy visits to Assam, the Seychelles and Mauritius to carry out survey projects, and it was after observing the connection between hookworm infection and anaemia in the Seychelles that Foy decided to establish a colony of baboons at Nairobi to undertake more sytematic study of the phenomenon. In 1961 accomodation was built for 150 baboons and a breeding nucleus. The colony was subsequently employed in several research projects, chiefly into the various effects of B vitamin deficiencies, and research continued after the official retirement of Foy in 1970.

In addition to laboratory-based research with the baboons, Foy and Kondi also took part in large scale projects, including investigations of anaemias in children with kwashiorkor and marasmus, survey of the incidence of tropical sprue in East Africa and surveys of anaemias in India, Mauritius and the Seychelles. The achievements of Foy's laboratories in Salonika and Nairobi were praised by Sir Henry Dale, and the idea of a small expert team working on well defined projects using locally gathered data and with secure financial support was used as a model for planning research facilities in other tropical countries.

Frederick Gordon Spear (1895-1980) MRCS, LRCP, DTM and H, DPH, was a radiologist. Spear originally studied tropical medicine, and spent some time at the Baptist Mission Hospital at Yakusu in the Belgian Congo in the early 1920s. In 1923 he returned to England and joined the Strangeways Research Laboratory, where he worked until his retirement, serving latterly as Deputy Director.

Michael Scott Montague Fordham: Born, 1905; Trinity College Cambridge, 1924; St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1927; Junior Medical Officer, Long Grove Mental Hospital Epsom, 1932; Fellowship in Child Psychiatry, London Child Guidance Clinic, 1934; Consultant post to help evacuee children in hostels in the Nottingham area, 1942; helped set up a proposed training centre for analytical psychology, 1942; Appointed consultant to the Child Guidance Clinic at the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases, 1946; first editor of Journal of Analytical Psychology, 1955; Founder Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry, 1971; died, 1995.

Frieda Fordham:

Born Winefride Rothwell on 23 Feb 1903. She first pursued a career as a dancer, but in 1920 married Percy Campbell Hoyle, by whom she had two sons. Following the end of this marriage, she studied at the London School of Economics and trained as a psychiatric social worker. Working in that capacity at the London Child Guidance Clinic, she met Michael Fordham, whom she married in 1940. She later trained as an analytical psychotherapist. Her publications included the much reprinted (and translated into several languages) An Introduction to Jung's Psychology (Penguin, 1953), widely regarded as a classic text on this subject. She was also responsible for the famous opening words of the BBC radio programme 'Listen with Mother' - 'Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin'. After a decade of increasing ill-health, she died on 7 Jan 1988.

Frederick Parkes Weber (1863-1962): born in London, son of Sir Hermann Weber MD FRCP and his wife Matilda, May 8 1863; attends Temple Grove School, East Sheen, 1874-1877; educated at Charterhouse School, 1877-1881; enters Trinity College Cambridge, 1882; BA (Cantab) Medical education at St Bartholomew's, 1886; MB BCh (Cantab), 1889; MRCP, 1890; MD (Cantab), 1892; Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, 1891; Appointed Physician at the German Hospital, Dalston Becomes member of Pathological Society of London, 1894; FRCP, 1898; Physician to Mount Vernon Hospital for Diseases of the Chest, 1899-1911; First edition of Aspects of Death and correlated aspects of life in art, epigram and poetry, 1910; First Mitchell Lecturer, RCP, 1921; Marries Dr Hedwig Unger-Laissle; Fourth edition of Aspects of Death, 1933; Awarded the Moxon Gold Medal of the RCP for 'distinguished observation and research in clinical medicine', 1930; Some thoughts of a doctor, 1935; More thoughts of a doctor, 1938-1947; Gives his papers to the Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1958; Elected to the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society of Medicine; Gives £5000 to the Royal College of Physicians to promote advance in dermatology, 1959; dies aged 99 on 2 June 1962.

There are obituaries in the British Medical Journal, 1962, i, 1630-1, and The Lancet, 1962, i, 1308-9, and an entry in Munk's Roll of Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians. Frederick Parkes Weber's collected writings in celebration of his 80th birthday and 50th anniversary as physician to the German Hospital London, edited by the Medical Staff, 1943, is held in the Wellcome Library and includes a complete bibliography of his publications to that date (update to 1958 in PP/FPW/D.10), a list of the societies and organisations of which he was a member, and tributes from colleagues.

Grantly Dick Read is primarily famous for his work as a propagandist for 'natural childbirth'. This is the belief that in all but a small minority of cases labour is a normal physiological event, which in the case of properly instructed women can be carried out with a minimum of obstetric intervention. It includes the methods by which women can be trained to conduct labour as a conscious participant rather than a drugged patient. Dick Read's teachings were a matter of some controversy among the medical profession, as he was not a qualified obstetrician and even after his teachings had become widespread and his methods employed, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists refused to admit him to membership. However he gained considerable support from among women themselves.

Born, 1877; Graduated MB. BS. University of Durham, 1898; Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne; Postgraduate study at Vienna; MS, 1901; FRCS, 1903; Elected to staff of Royal Infirmary, 1906; Service with R.A.M.C. at home and overseas - for a time as consulting surgeon in Mesopotamia; 1914-1918; Council of Royal College of Surgeons, 1926-1950; Professor of Surgery in University of Durham, 1927; President of the Association of Surgeons of GB and Ireland Hunterian Professor, 1928; Orator, Medical Society of London, 1929; President Medical Society of London, 1934; Professor of Surgery in new British Postgraduate Medical School, 1935; Vice President, Royal College of Surgeons, 1937-1939; President, Medical Society of London, 1943-1944; died, 1951.

Hans Grüneberg was born in Germany and studied medicine in Bonn and biology in Berlin. At the invitation of J B S Haldane, he moved to London in 1933, where R A Fisher and M J D White were also working on genetics. Grüneberg established the subject of development genetics, along with C H Waddington. He studied the pathological processes in mutant mice, and formulated a 'pedigree of causes' of genes, which was an important model for human disease. In 1943 he published Genetics of the Mouse (extensively revised in 1952), a work which influenced many experimental laboratories.

Wilson was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1895. He was educated at King's College, London and Charing Cross Hospital Medical School, London where he undertook his first research at the suggestion of W.W.C. Topley. He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War, rejoining Topley at Charing Cross in 1920 as Demonstrator in Bacteriology. He moved with Topley, first to Manchester University as Lecturer in 1923, and then to the newly established London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) as Reader in Bacteriology in 1927. In 1930 he was appointed to the Chair of Bacteriology Applied to Hygiene, a post he held until 1947.

Wilson's researches, initially with Topley, encompassed the Salmonella group of bacteria, brucellosis and tuberculosis, milk hygiene and the control of diphtheria. Topley and Wilson established courses for the Diploma of Bacteriology at both Manchester and the LSHTM, and their celebrated text book Principles of bacteriology and immunity (first published in 1929) had its origins in these courses. After Topley's death in 1944, Wilson continued to revise the publication with A. A. Miles, reaching a seventh edition in 1984. With the approach of the Second World War, Wilson was involved in the planning of the Emergency Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) and became its Director in 1941. He continued as Director of the peacetime PHLS until his retirement in 1963, when he returned to LSHTM as Honorary Lecturer in Microbiology. Wilson died in 1987. He was elected FRS in 1978 (Buchanan Medal 1967). He was knighted in 1962.

Born, 1899; worked as medical orderly in the accident hospital at Konigshütte, 1917-1918; Studied medicine in Breslau, Würzburg and Freiburg; MD Freiburg, and began working with neurologist Professor Otfrid Foerster in Breslau, 1924; went to Hamburg to run a neurosurgical service in a municipal psychiatric hospital, 1928; returned to Breslau as Foerster's first assistant, 1929; Privatdozent, 1930; became neurologist and neurosurgeon to the Jewish hospital in Breslau, 1933; medical director of the Jewish hospital in Breslau, 1937; Witnessed the Kristalnacht, and was able to save a number of individuals by admitting them to the hospital, 1938; he and his family granted visas to go to England; invited to Oxford; started work in the Nuffield department of neurosurgery in the Radcliffe Infirmary under Hugh Cairns, 1939; invited to start a centre for paraplegics in the Emergency Medical Service Hospital at Stoke Mandeville, 1943; Centre opened and became an internationally renowned institution which revolutionised the treatment and management of paraplegia, 1944; Inception of sports programme at Stoke Mandeville, 1947; died, 1980.

Sir George White Pickering FRCP, FRS (1904-1980), was Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford.

Professor Sir Alexander Haddow FRCP, FRS (1907-1976) was an experimental pathologist specialising in cancer research.

He was born at Leven, Fife, the son of a miner, and grew up in Broxburn, West Lothian. In 1924-1929 he studied at Edinburgh University, graduating MB ChB; following this, he served as house physician and Carnegie Research Student at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and worked in general practice in Hull, before becoming an assistant lecturer in bacteriology at Edinburgh University. He became a full lecturer and Davidson Reserch Fellow in 1932, his research leading to the qualifications of PhD and MD in 1937 and DSc in 1938.

By 1936 he joined Ernest Kennaway's team at the Royal Cancer Hospital (now the Marsden Hospital) in London, and in 1946 became Director of the Chester Beatty Research Institute, succeeding Kennaway. During these years his work built on Kennaway's achievement of extracting chemicals from coal tar that proved carcinogenic to animals. Haddow reasoned that if these carcinogens were compared to other closely related but non-carcinogenic chemicals the differences between them would prove significant in explaining the genesis of cancer. He also discovered what is known as the Haddow Effect, in which a carcinogenic chemical can be used to arrest a cancer caused by some other carcinogenic chemical (provided that the two chemicals are not closely related). Clinical trials at the Royal Cancer Hospital led to the adoption of the platinum compound cisplatin as a treatment for cancer of the ovary, and other compounds such as chlorambucil, melphalan and busulphan are used for treatment of breast and ovarian cancer, and malignant blood diseases.

Haddow was elected FRS in 1958 and knighted in 1966, receiving many other honours such as the Croix de Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. He was president of the International Union Against Cancer 1962-1966. His other activities included work with the BBC, service on the Press Council, and work with the Pugwash Conferences of scientists opposed to nuclear weapons.

He was married twice, to Dr Lucia Lindsay Crosby Black (d.1968), with whom he had one son, William George Haddow (b.1934), and after her death to Feo Standing née Garner, scientific photographer, who survived him.

He died in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, in 1976, and was cremated there.

Born 7 February 1858 in New South Wales, brought to the United Kingdom in 1860; educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College under Dorothea Beale; studied painting and music in Germany; trained as nurse in Liverpool Infirmary; studied medicine in London, Glasgow and Brussels; LRCP and LRCS(Edinburgh); MD (Brux) 1890; practiced in Calcutta for some years; went to Afghanistan to recoup her health and became personal physician to the Amir; visited England 1895 in the retinue of his son the Shahzada Nasrullah; returned to England 1896 and did settlement work in Liverpool; practiced medicine in England until her health broke down; went to South Africa (where her brother Dundas became a farmer); became Warden of Studley College, Warwickshire (established to train women for careers in horticulture and agriculture and allied professions); was a member of the Women's Freedom League; c 1915 went to Montenegro under the auspices of the Wounded Allies Relief Committee and ran a hospital there: returned to Studley where her health became progressively poorer and died at Nice in January 1925.

Hare was a bacteriologist of repute working through an exciting period in the history of the discipline. Among other activities he reported on the scientific value of bacteriological experiments undertaken in German concentration camps during World War Two [see PP/HAR/B.7]. He was also an historian of the subject. Born, 1899; Royal Masonic School, Bushey, Herts, 1910-1917; Birkbeck College, 1918-1919; St Mary's Hospital: LMSSA, MBBS, 1919-1924; Research scholarship, Institute of Pathology and Research, St Mary's, 1925; Assistant, Inoculation dept, St Mary's, 1926-1930; 1st Assistant, Research Laboratories, Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London, 1931-1936; Canada: Research Associate, Connaught Laboratories, University of Toronto, Lecturer in Department of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine; largely responsible for planning and building of Canadian Government penicillin plant at University of Toronto, 1936-1946; Professor of Bacteriology, University of London, 1946-1964; Honorary Consulting Bacteriologist, St Thomas's Hospital, 1951; Member of Council of Wright-Fleming Institute, 1952-1960; Emeritus Professor of Bacteriology, University of London, 1964; died, 1986.

Born, 1900; Educated at Wychwood School Oxford; Madras College, St Andrews, 1916; Edinburgh University to read Zoology, 1918; B.Sc: works with Dr F A E Crew; goes to Cambridge as Scientific Assistant to Dr T S P Strangeways with MRC funding, 1923; Junior Beit Fellowship, Ph.D, 1924; Senior Beit Fellow; Director of the Strangeways Research Laboratory, 1929-1970; Messel Research Fellow of the Royal Society, 1931-1943; D.Sc Edinburgh, 1932; Foulerton Research Fellow of the Royal Society, 1943-1967; FRS, 1952; DBE, Royal Society Research Professor, 1963; retires as Director of the Strangeways Laboratory, 1970; Research Worker in Division of Immunology, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, 1970-1979; Research worker at Strangeways Laboratory, 1979-1986; died, 1986.

The Rev Dr Hubert Carey (Hugh) Trowell, OBE, MD, FRCP (1904-1989) Physician, paediatrician, and nutritionist. Born, 1904; Qualified at St Thomas's Medical School, 1928; House Physician, St Thomas's Hospital, 1928-1929; Colonial Medical Service, Kenya, 1929; Study of kwashiorkor, 1930-1958; Senior Physician and Senior Paediatrician, Mulago Hospital, Kampala, Uganda, 1935-1958; Return to England, 1959; Ordained into Anglican Church, 1960; Vicar at Stratford-sub-Castle, and chaplain to Salisbury Hospital, 1960-1970; First Chairman of London Medical Group for Study of Medical Ethics, 1960-1964; Study Secretary of the newly formed Institute of Religion and Medicine, 1960-1966; Chair of BMA working party on the ethical aspects of euthanasia, Retired, study of 'dietary fibre', 1970; President of Institute of Religion and Medicine, 1979; died, 1989.

Head was born in 1861, and attended Charterhouse school in Godalming. He spent 1880 in Halle, Germany, learning German and attending lectures at the University on physiology and histology. After graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1884, he worked on the physiology of respiration with Ewald Hering at the German University in Prague from 1884 to 1886.

In 1896 Head met Ruth Mayhew, an assistant mistress at Oxford High School who became headmistress of Brighton High School for Girls in 1899. They were soon writing to each other at least once every week, and married on 28th April 1904. Their home was a meeting place of talents, artistic as well as scientific, and their friends included Thomas Hardy, Siegfried Sassoon and Stephen Tennant. Head wrote poetry, and in their correspondence, he and Lady Head discuss his ideas and their expression.

The work for which Head became widely known to the general public was his study with W H R Rivers in 1905 of the effects of severing the nerves in his own arm.

Head suffered for the last twenty years of his life from Parkinson's disease, which gradually disabled him. Although his mind remained active, even to the extent of recording the effects of the disease on his own body, he was forced to give up most of his activities. He published his seminal work on aphasia in 1926, but had already retired from his active work as Editor of Brain and as consulting physician at the London Hospital. Thereafter, he and Lady Head lived first at Dorchester and then, after the death of Thomas Hardy, at Hartley Court, near Reading. Lady Head died in September 1939, and Sir Henry in October 1940.

Further biographical details can be found in the Dictionary of National Biography, in Sir Russell Brain's Doctors past and present (Pitman Medical, 1964), and in obituaries in the British Medical Journal, the Lancet and Brain. R A Henson's biographical work was edited after his death by W I Macdonald and was published in the Journal of Medical Biography, 1998; 6: 15-20.

Career summary:

Born 4 August 1861; 1875-1880 Charterhouse School, Godalming; Mar-Aug 1880 Halle, Germany; 1880-1884 Trinity College, Cambridge: BA 1884; Sep 1884-1886 The German University, Prague; Completed courses in anatomy and physiology at Cambridge: MA 1886; Clinical study at University College Hospital: qualified MB 1890; MD 1892; MRCS, LRCP 1890; House physician, University College Hospital; House physician, Victoria Park Hospital for Diseases of the Chest; 1894 Clinical Assistant, County Asylum, Rainhill, Prescot, Lancashire; 1896 Registrar, then Assistant Physician, London Hospital, Whitechapel; 1913 Physician; 1919 Consulting Physician; 1894 MRCP; 1900 FRCP; 1899 FRS; 1908 Awarded the Royal Medal; 1910-1925 Editor of Brain; 1927 Knighted; Died 8 Oct 1940

Hans Georg Epstein was born in Berlin on the 25 April 1909. He was educated in Switzerland and Bavaria but returned to Berlin where he studied for a doctorate in physics from the Department of Physical Chemistry at Berlin University, gaining the 'very rare distinction' (Ref.: PP/HGE/A/B/6) of summa cum laude in 1934.

In the late 1930s, Dr Epstein, also known as 'Eppy' or 'Ep' to work colleagues and friends, moved to England and worked briefly in London before moving to Oxford to pursue his scientific research.

It was in Oxford that Epstein began specialising in research and development in the field of anaesthesia. He was employed at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford at the suggestion of the first Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetics, Sir Robert Macintosh who was keen to develop new forms of ether inhaler, ether being the principle anaesthetic of the day.

With the outbreak of war, in 1939, Epstein was taken on by the Nuffield Department of Anaesthetics to help develop a portable yet reliable inhaler that could be used on the battlefield where access to oxygen cylinders and anaesthetic gases was not possible. It was also essential that individuals with no medical training could safely and effectively use the apparatus. The resulting product was the Oxford Vaporizer, which was manufactured by the Lord Nuffield-owned Morris Motors Ltd and used by allied troops across the world (Ref.: PP/HGE/C/A/5, copy of letter from Sgt Alex Hood, 1943).

During the war Epstein helped to develop other products, such as life jackets for airmen, but his principal interest and expertise lay in the research and development of anaesthetic inhalers. In 1956, the Epstein Macintosh Oxford (EMO) inhaler was released, superseding the Oxford vaporizer. The EMO was a more sophisticated yet simpler apparatus that used internal bellows to maintain a constant flow of gases. A later version, known as the EMOTRIL (which used Trichloroethylene), was specifically developed for analgesia in obstetrics.

Through the 1950s and 1960s Epstein continued his research and development of anaesthesia inhalers, building himself a global reputation as a leading expert in this field. His inhalers harnessed the latest anaesthesia agents, such as Halothane: an example was the Oxford Miniature Vaporizer (OMV), a version of which found use during the Falklands conflict in 1982 (Ref: PP/HGE/C/A/4 Times newspaper clipping).

Epstein's research was often accompanied by a personal interest in the historical development of the subject concerned. His papers include many items that show an interest in the historical developments in anaesthesia, as well as a wider interest in topics such as the history of scientific research into resuscitation (Ref: PP/HGE/H/1 and PP/HGE/H/2).

During his time at Oxford, Epstein developed a reputation as an informative and entertaining lecturer. He was given many invitations to speak on a range of anaesthesia topics; however, most memorable were his lectures and demonstrations on the subject of anaesthetic explosions.

Epstein also found time to research and co-write Physics for the Anaesthetist. It was hailed as a seminal resource in the field of anaesthesia and three editions were published between 1946 and 1963. However, delays in publishing a fourth, revised edition were blamed on Epstein and led to him being ejected from the project in 1982 (Ref: PP/HGE/E/A/2), much to his dissatisfaction. The fourth edition was eventually published in 1987, though Epstein remained bitter as to the amount of credit attributed to himself and Lord Nuffield within this edition (Ref: PP/HGE/E/A/3 draft letter to Per Saugman).

Epstein spent the latter years of his working life, and part of his retirement (until the mid 1980s) conducting anaesthesia research tests for the medical apparatus manufacturer Penlon. Retirement also allowed Epstein to pursue his interests outside of science, including cycling and food and wine connoisseurship. Dr Hans Epstein died in Oxford on 1 August 2002.

Physiologist; Nobel laureate.

See the description of the collection for details of the family history, where it is set out as part of an explanation of how the collection is divided into various sections.

Helena Wright was born in 1887. She trained at the London School of Medicine for Women, qualifying as MRCS (Eng.) and LRCP (Lond.) in 1914, and MB, BS in 1915. She subsequently worked at the Bethnal Green Hospital, where she met her husband Peter Wright, a Royal Army Medical Corps surgeon. After the First World War she and her husband decided to become medical missionaries in China, working at the Shantung Christian University in Tsinan until 1927. Following her return to England, Wright became an influential figure in the National Birth Control Association, later the Family Planning Association. She wrote several much reprinted works of popular sex instruction, including The Sex Factor in Marriage (1930). During her later years she became interested in alternative medicine and the paranormal, and there is a small amount of material in this collection which reflects this interest. She died in 1982.

Donald Hunter was Director of the MRC Department for Research in Industrial Medicine, at the London Hospital, and author of Diseases of Occupations. Born, 1898; Student at the London Hospital, 1915; Surgeon-probationer RNVR HMS Faulknor, 1918; MB BS London, MRCS LRCP, 1920; MD London, 1922; Member of RCP, 1923; Research fellowship, Harvard, 1926; Assistant Physician, London Hospital, 1927; FRCP, 1929; Goulstonian Lecture, RCP, 1930; Curator of London Hospital Medical School Museum, 1933-1963; Croonian Lecture, RCP, 1942; Director of the MRC Department for Research in Industrial Medicine at the London Hospital, 1943; First editor of British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1944; Hon DIH Society of Apothecaries, 1960; Retirement from London Hospital, 1963; Middlesex Hospital, lecturing on occupational diseases, 1963-1967; Guy's Hospital, lecturing on occupational diseases, 1967-1971; died, 1977.

John Chassar Moir was the first Nuffield Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Oxford, a post he held from 1937 to 1967. At University College Hospital, London, he and Dr Harold Ward Dudley had isolated the new drug ergometrine, responsible for the traditional clinical effects of ergot, which was rapidly and universally adopted for the prevention of haemorrhage after childbirth, and he had written a thesis on rotation of the foetus in childbirth for which he gained his MD and a gold medal from Edinburgh University. At Oxford, he built up the Radcliffe Infirmary, studied the use of diagnostic x-rays in obstetrics, and made an outstanding contribution to gynaecological surgery, the repair of vesico-vaginal fistulae. He was for several years the co-editor and for the sixth edition sole editor, of Munro-Kerr's well-known textbook Operative Obstetrics. He became president of the obstetrics and gynaecology section of the Royal Society of Medicine, and in 1974 was made an honorary fellow. Further biographical details can be found in the obituaries in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet.

John Read was born in Hendon, Middlesex on 31 March 1908. He left school at 16 to work as a clerk in the Derbyshire County Council Education Department. Studying in the evenings, he took the University of London external B.Sc. in Physics and Applied Mathematics in 1929 and then won a scholarship to Nottingham University College where he took a B.Sc. in Special Physics in 1931. Read then won a teaching fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and worked for his Ph.D. on the attenuation coefficients of scattered radiation from a range of elements. He returned to the UK in 1934, joining the Radium Beam Research Unit as Assistant Physicist working with L.H. Gray at Mount Vernon Hospital in London. Gray and Read were awarded a grant from the British Empire Cancer Campaign to build a neutron generator for study of the biological action of neutrons. In the words of John Haggith's obituary of Read in Scope vol 3 (1994), 'The next five years were remarkable. It took them two years of toil and brilliant improvisation to build the neutron generator and then just three years to put neutron and alpha dosimetry on a sound footing and obtain the RBEs [Relative Biological Effectiveness] for neutrons, alpha particles, X- and gamma-rays'.

In 1939 Read moved to the British Institute of Radiology. In 1941 he was seconded to British Thomson-Houston Co. in Rugby for war work, after which in 1943 he took up the post of Hospital Physicist at the London Hospital. In the same year he played a leading role in the establishment of the Hospital Physicists Association. In 1946 he was made Head of the British Empire Cancer Campaign's Biophysics Research Group at the Mount Vernon Hospital and the Radium Institute, from 1948 serving as Combined Head of the Research Group and Physics Department. In 1950 the British Empire Cancer Campaign established a laboratory for research into radiation biology in Christchurch, New Zealand (moving to Dunedin in 1952). Read was appointed Director of the Radiation Biology Group. He remained in New Zealand for the rest of his life, making occasional return visits to Britain. As head of the Radiation Biology Group, with limited resources, Read pursued research into how ionising radiations destroy tumours and how this action could be influenced by other factors. He retired in 1974. Read was awarded the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Anderson-Berry Gold Medal in 1953 and gave the Douglas Lea Memorial Lecture in 1957. He died in Dunedin on 10 October 1993.

James Randal Hutchinson (c.1880-1955) was a Medical Officer at the Ministry of Health, 1919-1947.

William Henry Bradley (1898-1975) was a Senior and Principal Medical Officer at the Ministry of Health, 1939-1963.

Born, 1920; Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Ipswich Hospital; died, 2001.