John Crofton
Sir John Wenman Crofton (born March 27, 1912 in Dublin , † November 3, 2009 in Edinburgh ) was a British physician and expert on tuberculosis .
Live and act
His father, William Mervyn Crofton, was also a doctor who did research at the University of Dublin and had private practices in Dublin and London. Crofton went to school in Dublin and Tonbridge in Kent and studied science from 1930 at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University (top grades in the Natural Science Tripos in 1933) and then medicine, with a bachelor's degree in medicine (MB) in 1937 and a doctorate ( MD) 1947. His clinical training began in 1937 at St. Thomas Hospital in London.
His first positions as a doctor were in military hospitals. During World War II he served as a military doctor and surgeon in France (Dunkirk), Egypt and Eritrea, and from 1942 to 1944 in Malta. In 1945 he married Eileen Chris Mercer, who was also a doctor. With her he had two sons and three daughters. From 1947 he was a lecturer at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in Hammersmith . An article in the British Medical Journal (1950) on the treatment of tuberculosis with streptomycin, a then new antibiotic from the USA, established its reputation. At Brompton Hospital in Kensington, which specialized in heart and lung diseases, he led a control study on the treatment of tuberculosis with streptomycin and 4-aminosalicylic acid on behalf of the Medical Research Council . He became a Senior Lecturer and became one of the youngest ever elected members of the Royal College of Physicians before becoming Professor of Respiratory Diseases and Tuberculosis at the University of Edinburgh in 1952 , in a newly created chair. There he developed the Edinburgh method of tuberculosis treatment, which consisted of combination chemotherapy and careful control of the patient's drug intake. The method also allowed workers to continue doing their jobs during therapy. It has been very successful in reducing tuberculosis in Edinburgh (over 90 percent of tuberculosis beds in hospitals have been cut) and Crofton has been pursuing it in the rest of the UK and around the world since then. Before his death, he was involved in drafting the WHO guidelines on tuberculosis. One of the employees was Karel Styblo . He was also active in the university administration and in the university's senate. 1963 to 1966 he was dean of the medical faculty and from 1969 to 1971 vice principal of the university. That was during the student riots, and when Gordon Brown was elected rector of the university as a student in 1972 , he was ready to work with him (unlike much of the old university administration). In 1977 he retired.
He was also very active in the fight against smoking, aided by his wife Eileen, who from 1972 headed the Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) in Scotland. His wife wrote a story of the (Scottish) nurses and doctors at Royaumont Hospital during World War I, 1917/18. Crofton had good relations in Iraq and especially in Basra and enabled doctors there to train in Great Britain.
In 1969, Blackwell Scientific published his standard work with Andrew Douglas on respiratory diseases in the first edition.
From 1973 to 1976 he was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh .
In 1977 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . From 1984 to 1988 he was President of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD). In 1998 he was co-founder and honorary president of the TB Alert tuberculosis foundation. In 2001 he received the Galen Medal from the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London .
He was a passionate mountaineer and especially climbed in the Scottish Highlands .
Fonts
- with Andrew Douglas: Respiratory Diseases, 5th Edition, Wiley 2008 (Editors Anthony Seaton, Douglas Seaton, A. Gordon Leitch)
- with Norman Horne, Fred Miller: Clinital Tuberculosis, Macmillan 1992
- Saving Lives and Preventing Misery: The Memoirs of Professor Sir John Wenman Crofton (Editor David C. Kilpatrick), 2013
- as editor: Guidelines for the Management of Drug-resistant Tuberculosis, WHO 1997
- with David Simpson: Tobacco, a global threat, Macmillan 2002
Web links
- Tam Dalyell: Sir John Crofton: Physician whose research revolutionized the treatment of tuberculosis and lung disease, obituary of November 5, 2009 in The Independent
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Crofton, John |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Crofton, John Wenman |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British medic |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 27, 1912 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dublin |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 3, 2009 |
| Place of death | Edinburgh |