Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Preface
- 1 Early life and training
- 2 London 1946—54
- 3 Appointment to the Glasgow Chair
- 4 Glasgow obstetrics in the Fifties
- 4 Sharing Enthusiasm: A textbook – and a teacher – with a difference
- 5 The Western Infirmary Wards G9 and 10
- 6 The cutting edge – in the operating theatre
- 7 The Queen Mother's Hospital
- 8 Science and Serendipity: Ultrasound takes off
- 9 Home life and hobbies
- 10 “Naught for your comfort”: social reform and medical ethics in a changing world
- 11 “At the receiving end”: courage and faith
- 12 “The evening cometh”: international fame, continued battle with illness and home happiness in retirement
- Sources
- Index
- Plate section
4 - Glasgow obstetrics in the Fifties
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Preface
- 1 Early life and training
- 2 London 1946—54
- 3 Appointment to the Glasgow Chair
- 4 Glasgow obstetrics in the Fifties
- 4 Sharing Enthusiasm: A textbook – and a teacher – with a difference
- 5 The Western Infirmary Wards G9 and 10
- 6 The cutting edge – in the operating theatre
- 7 The Queen Mother's Hospital
- 8 Science and Serendipity: Ultrasound takes off
- 9 Home life and hobbies
- 10 “Naught for your comfort”: social reform and medical ethics in a changing world
- 11 “At the receiving end”: courage and faith
- 12 “The evening cometh”: international fame, continued battle with illness and home happiness in retirement
- Sources
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
The arrival of Professor Ian Donald in 1954 made an immediate impact on the Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital. Tall, impressive, with brilliant red hair and a rather leonine facial expression, he had a haughty aristocratic manner which was foreign to the inbred Glasgow scene. He looked rather like an English colonial administrator who had arrived to civilise the natives. This impression was emphasised by his occasional wearing of a monocle, although hauteur dissolved into laughter when it fell into his soup!
Those not in the intimacy of “C” unit, which he led, observed with cynical amusement how he sat in the centre of the long side of the table in the traditional hospital dining room with his juniors ranged to right and left. Those on his right hand looked left and those on his left looked right. It was a testimony to his personal magnetism that all of them seemed to hang onhis every word. He had arrived to challenge the obstetric establishment and much of what he said was provoking.
He was, however, heir to a long tradition. The great clinical experience that had accumulated in Glasgow was the result of much social change. In the eighteenth century, Glasgow was a pleasant, prosperous academic town in rural surroundings, rather like Oxford, and was centred on its twelfth century cathedral and the elegant renaissance buildings of its university.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Ian DonaldA Memoir, pp. 15 - 19Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004