Dacie , Sir , John Vivian , 1912-2005 , Knight , Professor of Haematology

Dacie , Sir , John Vivian , 1912-2005 , Knight , Professor of Haematology

John Vivian Dacie was born on 20th July 1912 in Putney, London; educated at King's College School; attended King's College London Faculty of Medical Science, King's College Hospital, and qualified in medicine in 1935; became a member of the Royal College of Physicians, 1936; licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1935; Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, 1935 and a Reader in Haematology. After a year in the pathology department at King's College Hospital, Dacie took his first research post at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, at Hammersmith Hospital, London, to study haemolytic anaemia. He then moved to Manchester Royal Infirmary where he investigated a patient with paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria, a rare chronic haemolytic anaemia; this began his interest in the illness. In 1937, he spent 6 months working with Dame Janet Vaughan at the British Postgraduate School, Hammersmith Hospital.

During World War Two, Dacie served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps (Emergency Medical Service), working as a pathologist, 1939-1942; Dacie found that injured troops, who had lost a lot of blood on the battleground, did better when given plasma rather than whole blood and he devised more effective blood-transfusion methods for field hospitals for the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1943-1946. After the war, he became Senior Lecturer in Haematology in the Department of Clinical Pathology at the Postgraduate Medical School (which later became the Royal Postgraduate Medical School of London), the only institution in the UK at that time devoted to clinical academic medicine.

Dacie was appointed the first Professor of Haematology in the United Kingdom, at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, 1956; pioneered the laboratory investigation of hemolytic anaemia; developed a remarkable expertise in the laboratory diagnosis of the leukaemias; wrote 180 scientific papers; founded the Leukaemia Research Fund, 1960; elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, 1967; knighted, 1976; President of the Royal College of Pathologists, 1973-1975, President of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1977; founder and editor of the British Journal of Haematology and retired in 1977. He died in 2005.

Publications: Dacie and Lewis practical haematology (Churchill Livingstone, London, 2001); The Haemolytic anaemias: congenital and acquired (J & A Churchill Ltd, London, 1954); The Haemolytic anaemias part 1: the congenital anaemias (Churchill, 1960); The haemolytic anaemias part 2 (Churchill, 1963); Haemolytic anaemias part 3 (Churchill, 1967); Haemolytic anaemias part 4 (Churchill, 1967); The hereditary haemolytic anaemias : the Davidson Lecture delivered on Friday, January 13th, 1967 at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh by J.V. Dacie (Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1967); British Medical Bulletin v.11, no. 1, 1955 'Blood Coagulation and thrombosis Hormones in Reproduction', Scientific editor: J. V. Dacie (Medical Department, British Council, London, 1955).