Moir , John Chassar , 1900-1977 , Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology

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.