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ObituaryEDWARD FARQUHAR BUZZARD

BT, KCVO, D M OXFD, LLD, F R C P

Sir Farquhar Buzzard, emeritus regius professor ofmedicine at Oxford, and consulting physician to St.Thomas’s Hospital and the National Hospital, QueenSquare, London, died at Oxford on Dec. 17, a few daysbefore his 74th birthday. His life had been lived fully,in classical sequence ; and in each phase-as athlete,clinician, and medical statesman-it was distinguished.But in a career of conventional success he also showed avision and sympathy that were by no means conventional.As he grew older he continued to look forwards.Edward Farquhar Buzzard was born in 1871, the

eldest son of Dr. Thomas Buzzard, of the NationalHospital, Queen Square; who sat for Luke Fildes’spicture The Doctor. In 1885 he went to CharterhouseSchool, where Max Beerbohm bright-ened his exercise-books with draw-ings of masters and boys. On

entering Magdalen College, Oxford,in 1891, with a science exhibitionfrom his school, he gained renownchiefly in association football, play-ing for his university in 1893-94.Though he won the Mead medal atSt. Thomas’s Hospital in 1897," his best friends in College Housenever for a moment supposed thatthis quiet, unassuming colleaguewould one day blossom out into aregius professor." Unlike mostothers destined for the St. Thomas’sstaff, he did not become medicalregistrar or resident assistant physic-ian, but gravitated naturally toQueen Square and the post of house-physician to his father’s colleagueHughlings Jackson. Jackson wasthe " grave friend and pseudo-uncle " of the Buzzard children, andlater Buzzard recalled that " fromthe day I left the nursery until Ibecame his colleague on the staff ofthe National Hospital " he was " one of the mostfamiliar and outstanding figures in my domestic andprofessional life."At Queen Square, Buzzard held successively the

appointments of medical registrar and pathologist." Every afternoon there were rounds with Hughlings

, Jackson, Bastian, Horsley, Gowers, or Ferrier. Morn-

ings were spent note-taking in the wards, and sparehours, often spreading far into the night, were devotedto work in the pathological laboratory under the safeguidance of Batten. It is no matter for surprise thatwe found the Bloomsbury climate exhilarating and cameto regard the hospital as a neurological Olympus." In1905 he was elected to the staff, and next year he becameFRCP, delivering the Goulstonian lectures of 1907 onToxic and Infective Conditions of the Nervous System.He also joined the staff of the Belgrave Hospital forChildren, and of the Royal Free Hospital, where helectured on medical pathology. Not until 1910 did hereturn to St. Thomas’s, to which he brought a reputationalready made. The growth of this reputation, and someof the reasons for it, were well described in the hospital’sGazette in 1928 :

"During the following years his activities increased in everydirection; endowed with a magnificent constitution, he seemedimpervious to fatigue, and found time and energy to answerthe many calls made upon him. Committees of all kindswanted him, medical discussions expected him, Boards ofExaminers invited him, medical dining clubs insisted onhim ; and on this busy life he nourished, grew younger andmore communicative. Original work had perforce to be

abandoned, but originality of thought seemed rather to

increase, and with it an attractive lucidity of expression whichinvested much of his writing with considerable charm. His

growing interest in, and insistence on, the importance of themental factor in disease rather shocked the purists, but hewas not easily diverted from a course which he had adoptedonly after mature deliberation.

" Owing to his multifarious activities Buzzard was not

always able to devote as much time to his hospital work as hiscolleagues would have wished. His opinion on a neurologicalcase was second to none and was eagerly sought after, and itis not too much to say that his transparent honesty both withdoctors and patients played no small part in his success inpractice. In council he was invaluable, and there is probablynot one of his colleagues who cannot recall an occasion onwhich his intervention in a rambling discussion has brought adiscursive committee back to earth and focused attention onthe things that really mattered."

" His patients, both hospital and private, regarded himas a solid rock on which it was their special privilege tolean, while his house physicians can testify to his broadoutlook, kindly criticism, and sound judgment. To theunqualified student, he made less appeal; as a clinicalteacher he was a trifle ponderous and given to pondering,and being devoid of all theatricality, he possessed none ofthe subtle arts of the showman."

A prodigious worker, he neverthe-less contrived to give the impressionthat time was no object ; hisaphorism that " the doctor in a hurryis a menace to his patients " causedquiet amusement to his friends." The most important differencebetween the good and indifferentclinician," he said, " is the amount ofattention paid to the story of apatient."As a clinician he excelled chiefly

by his knowledge and judgment. Hismany published lectures-which in-clude the Lettsomians of 1926, theMaudsley of 1932, and the Harveianoration of 1941-reflect these quali-ties, associated always with a fresh-ness of outlook. Apart from suchutterances, his chief publicationswere the Pathology of the NervousSystem, produced with J. G. Green-field in 1921, and the chapters onneurology in several leading text-books. But his professional rangewas anything but narrow. At theRoyal Society of Medicine he was

president of three sections-neurology, psychiatry, andclinical medicine-while his other presidencies includedthe International Society of Medical Hydrology, andalso the Institute of Hospital Almoners, which is con-tinuously concerned, as he was, with the social factorsin disease.

Buzzard, as a physician-extraordinary to KingGeorge V, was appointed KCVO in 1927, and was oneof Lord Dawson’s team attending the King in the follow-ing year. He was created a baronet of MunsteadGrange, in the parish of Godalming, in 1929. Mean-while, in 1928, he had accepted the regius chair atOxford as successor to Sir Archibald Garrod.The choice was a happy one for Oxford. Elected an

honorary fellow of Magdalen, Buzzard threw himself intoall the activities of the medical school, and from the .beginning had ideas for its improvement and expansion.As chairman of the board of the faculty of medicine,active consulting physician to the Radcliffe Infirmaryand chairman of its honorary staff committee, andrepresentative of the university on the General MedicalCouncil, he was soon in the thick of all medical activities.His talents for administration were early recognisedby the university at large, and he was at various timesa member of the hebdomadal council, a curator of theuniversity chest, and a curator of the Bodleian library.Always, however, he remained faithful to clinicalmedicine, took a weekly teaching round, and did someconsulting practice, although this diminished as hisother duties accumulated. In 1935 he contestedunsuccessfully the university parliamentary election asa Conservative, but his failure to secure a seat was inmany ways a relief to his medical colleagues, who feltthat his wisdom was needed more at Oxford than at West-minster.

In 1936 the British Medical Association had its annualmeeting at Oxford, and Buzzard was president. Hisgracious, hospitable, and statesmanlike chairmanship

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helped to make a memorable meeting. At this meetingwas sown the seed of Lord Nuffield’s vast benefactionsto the medical school.A convinced and convincing planner, the president

used his address to point out that the war against diseasewas conducted on a wasteful and ill-organised system.General practitioners, he affirmed, were not the backbonebut rather the skilful and sensitive fingers of the pro-fession, and he urged that they should be given leisure towork. His plan was based on " health centres," bywhich he meant central boards based geographically onthe chief hospital, and representative of all the interestsand institutions concerned with the health of the district.Round the table, he continued, would be seated not onlythe municipal lions and the voluntary lambs, but also,where a medical school is included, delegates of the moreacademic departments. His whole plan was crowned bythe ambitious dream of a medical school for the trainingof those who, by ambition and ability, are fitted for acareer in clinical research, and a few months later LordNumeld gave reality to this ambitious dream throughhis initial gift of £1 million.

In realising these projects for Oxford Buzzard’s laboursof negotiation, planning, and placating were immense.He played the leading part in translating the great giftinto a scheme which is now, despite the war, a thrivingand active series of departments which exert a quickeninginfluence on all parts of the Oxford Medical School andindeed on British medicine. On the outbreak of war hisenthusiasm brought into being a complete clinical schoolat the Radcliffe Infirmary.

In 1940 the university awarded him the Osler memorialmedal, a distinction conferred once in five years on " theOxford medical graduate who shall have made the mostvaluable contribution to the science, art, or literature ofmedicine." To his colleagues this seemed an appropriateway of saying that no man living had done more for theOxford Medical School than he. In 1941 he was electedpresident of the Association of Physicians. In 1943 heretired from the regius chair and was elected an honorarystudent of Christ Church. Retirement, however, did notmean rest. He continued in full activity at hospitalsurveys, planning, and the other work of the Nuffield.Provincial Hospitals Trust, and served as a universitymember of the Oxford city council. For all such servicehe was well fitted. He had cultivated the unusual artof well-timed silence, much as other men cultivate thatof conversation. In a committee, while others talkedround the subject, he would draw complicated designson the agenda paper or blotting-pad, and at the end wouldresolve the difficulty under discussion with few butweighty words. In earlier days at least, he was not aneasy man to know intimately ; but at Oxford his col-leagues found him friendly, accessible, and modest.Happy in the company of the young, he went outof his way to be helpful. He advised but neverchided.Though he accumulated membership of a staggering

number of committees in and out of Oxford, he stillindulged his liking for games, and at 70 could play anafternoon’s lawn-tennis or beat at squash rackets aman half his own age. On the tennis-courts or the golf-links " certain palpable defects of style were more thanatoned for by an imperturbability and tenacity ofpurpose that were at once the alarm and envy of hisopponents." Until near the end of his life he alwaysenjoyed robust health, and he would have hated thechronic invalidism he was mercifully spared. Never-theless he had ample interests beyond his work and activesports. One was the Turf, and in former days he wasnever happier than when he went racing with his friendthe late Dr. James Birley. Others were sketching, thecollection of pictures, and church architecture. " Ilike nothing better," he once said, " than to spend a fewdays at some place like Ely, and some hours of eachday in the cathedral."In 1899 Sir Farquhar Buzzard married May, daughter

of the late Mr. E. Bliss of Edgbaston. The eldest of theirthree daughters is married to Dr. Gardiner-Hill, andthe younger of their two sons is a doctor and servedduring the war in the RNVR. The father’s prowessat lawn-tennis was shared bv both his sons. one

being champion of the Navy and the other an Oxfordblue.

VELYIEN EWART HENDERSON

M A, MB TORONTO, PRCSC, FBSC

Dr. Velyien Henderson, professor of pharmacologyin the University of Toronto, died on Aug. 6 at the ageof 68. He achieved international fame in his subjectand was particularly known for his part in the discovervof the anaesthetic cyclopropane. Having graduatedfrom Toronto in 1902, he remained its devoted son andservant throughout his life. As a young man he travelledwidely, acting for a while as demonstrator in the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania and working in Prague underHans Meyer, in Marburg and Graz, and in Londonunder Starling. He became demonstrator in physiologyunder J. B. MacCallum in Toronto in 1904 and took overthe offshoot department of pharmacology from the timeof its inception in 1906 ; he was made professor in 1919.He served as a combatant officer from 1914 to 1919,becoming a major of artillery in the Canadian Expedi-tionary Force.

Dr. Henderson was endowed with a detailed memory,an analytical habit of thought, an over-ruling sense ofduty, and an independence sometimes verging on pug-nacity. He chose to tackle many different problems ofpharmacology, in the belief that by doing so he wouldequip himself better as a teacher, although he recognisedthat this policy was not likely to bring him such dis-tinctiori as he might expect from the consistent pursuitof one line. And yet it was perhaps this review of thefield of pharmacology which led him to consider theavailabte gases for use as anaesthetics and brought himto his greatest success. In 1923 Henderson and W.Eason Brown reported the clinical use of ethylene ; thesubsequeht investigation of propylene led to the dis-covery, in 1930, in collaboration with G. H. W. Lucas,of an active impurity, the isomer cyclopropane.

Dr. Henderson’s pharmacology had a firm physiologicalbackground and it was his earnest endeavour to see thathis students shared this in some measure. His teachingrelied largely on the demonstration and analysis ofmultiple tracings made by the use of mechanical devices,many contrived by himself. This method of learning_made considerable demands on the student.

Dr. Henderson was an active member of the Canadiancommittee on pharmaceutical standards from 1927 whenit was formed and honorary editor of its publication,the Canadian Formulary. Through the committee hewas an ardent promoter of regulations which have donemuch to free Canada of proprietary nostrums. The lateSir Frederick Banting claimed that it was Hendersonwho enabled him, a general practitioner, to obtain theresearch facilities within the university which led himand C. H. Best to the discovery of insulin. From 1929onwards Henderson was the honorary secretary-treasurerof the Banting Research Foundation, and his experiencedjudgment exerted a wide influence on medical researchthroughout Canada.Many honours came to him, including a scroll of

recognition for meritorious researches from the Inter-national Anaesthesia Research Society and the Flavellemedal of the Royal Society of Canada. He served aspresident of the Canadian Physiological Society, theFederation of American Societies for ExperimentalBiology, and of the Royal Society of Canada. He issurvived by his widow and two sons.

A RECENT deputation from the College of Midwives to theMinistry of Health asked for legislation empowering theCentral Midwives Board to make rules providing for a nationaluniform, which it would be an offence for anyone excepta State-certified midwife to wear. As midwifery was now anational service it was only right that there should be anational uniform, and this would help to raise the status ofthe profession and assist in recruitment. Mr. Charles Key,parliamentary secretary of the Ministry, replied that thenecessary legislation would be promoted on the next con-venient opportunity. This, however, would not be duringthe present session of Parliament. Meanwhile a suitableuniform might be designed.THE annual general meeting of the Medical Society of

the LCC Service will be held at the County Hall, WestminsterBridge, SE1, on Wednesday, Jan. 9, at 4.30 rM, when Sir AllenDaley will deliver his presidential address.