David Wilkie (surgeon)

Sir David Percival Dalbreck Wilkie (born November 5, 1882 in Kirriemuir , Angus , † August 28, 1938 in London ) was a Scottish surgeon . In Great Britain he is considered the founder of academic research on surgery and founded a school in Edinburgh for this purpose.

Wilkie was the son of a wealthy jute manufacturer (David Wilkie) and Margaret Forrest Mill and attended the Edinburgh Academy from 1896 and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh from 1899 with a bachelor's degree in medicine and surgery in 1904 (MB, ChB) . In 1908 he received his doctorate in medicine (MD) and in 1909 he received the university's gold medal in the master’s exams in surgery (MCh). He was House Surgeon and House Physician at Edinburgh Royal Infirmaty and House Surgeon of Harold Stiles (1908-1946) at Chalmers' Hospital for Sick Children. He completed his studies in Bonn, Bern and Vienna and visited Canada, where he initially wanted to emigrate.

Then he became a private assistant to Francis Mitchell Caird (1853-1926) in Edinburgh, who was a student of Joseph Lister and was very interested in experimental research in surgery (later he was professor of clinical surgery in Edinburgh), which also influenced Wilkie . He was at Leith Hospital and Falkirk Hospital and from 1914 Assistant Surgeon at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, but was only able to take up the position from 1919 due to the war. He was also the director of surgery at the Edinburgh City Hospitals.

During the First World War he was a surgeon with the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (of which he had been a member since 1908) in the Mediterranean (medical director on the hospital ship St Margaret of Scotland, temporarily at anchor in Salonika) and later in France.

After the war he taught surgery in Edinburgh in extramural school with John Fraser.

In 1924 he became professor of systematic surgery at Edinburgh University as the successor to Alexis Thomson (1863-1924). Wilkie started a surgical research laboratory at the University of Edinburgh.

By character, he has been described as calm and polite and friendly to everyone. Wilkie was generally called "DPD" after his abbreviated first name. He died of stomach cancer on a trip to London and is buried in Edinburgh (Dean Cemetery).

He was considered an excellent surgeon and dealt particularly with the gastrointestinal tract (acute appendicitis, stomach and colon cancer, spleen, gall bladder, intestinal obstruction, peritonitis). He is best known for his efforts to put surgery in Great Britain on a scientific basis.

He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (1907) and OBE . In 1925 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 1936 he was beaten to a Knight Bachelor degree , he was President of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland and he was Vice President of the British Empire Cancer Campaign. In 1918 he received the Liston Victoria Jubilee Prize.

He was friends with JM Barrie , who like him came from Kirriemuir (Barrie, however, from a much simpler background and about 20 years older).

In 1911 he married the daughter of a surgeon Charlotte Erskine. The marriage remained childless.

literature

• Iain MC Macintyre: Sir David Wilkie (1882-1938). Surgeon, scientist and philanthropist. In: Journal of Medical Biography. Volume 15, 2007, pp. 206-212, PMID 18172560 .
• Iain MC Macintyre, IF MacLaren: Surgeons' Lives. Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Edinburgh 2005.
• Dudley Hugh: Wilkie, Sir David Percival Dalbreck (1882-1938), surgeon. In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X .

Web links

• Wilkie Papers (pdf), Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh
• Plarr's Lives of the Fellows Online