Dr. J Purdon Martin, Dean 1943 – 1948
Dr MacDonald Critchley, Dean 1948 – 1953
Dr. Michael Kremer, Dean 1953 – 1962
Dr. JWD Bull, Dean 1962 - 1968
Dr. RE Kelly, Dean 1968 – 1975
Dr. PC Gautier-Smith, Dean 1975 – 1982
Prof John Marshall, Dean 1982 – 1987
Prof David Landon, Dean 1987 - 1995
Prof David Marsden, Dean 1995 – 1998
Prof Richard Frackowiack, Dean 1998 – 2002
Prof Roger Lemon, Dean 2002 – 2008
Prof Alan Thompson, Director 2008 – 2012
Prof Michael Hanna, Director 2012 – Present
Professor Thomas A Sears
Tom Sears (1928-2024) came to Queen Square in 1954, working as a Physiologist in the EEG department of the hospital. In 1956 he was appointed as one of the first full-time Lecturers in the Institute of Neurology, after its inception in 1950. Following a period in John (later Sir John) Eccles’ laboratory in Canberra, where he obtained his PhD, in 1968 he became a Reader in the department created for him, the Dept of Neurophysiology at the IoN, a department that was uniquely focused on a basic science approach to neurological conditions. In 1973, this became the Sobell Dept of Neurophysiology, with Tom now as Professor and Head of Department, and he remained in this role until his retirement in 1993. Over the following years, he continued working productively as Emeritus Professor at St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, subsequently King’s College London, and he remained scientifically active until his death.
Tom also played important roles in the Physiological Society, where he was Chair of the Editorial Board of their Journal, the Journal of Physiology, and in the European Neuroscience Association (ENA), for which he served a term as President. In 1977 he was made Docteur Honoris Causa by the University of Aix-Marseille.
Charles David Marsden
Professor David Marsden FRS, DSc, FRCP, MRCPsych, MBBS (19th April 1938 – 29 September 1998) was one of the outstanding clinician neuroscientists of the 20th Century. Professor David Marsden (19th April 1938 – 29 September 1998) was one of the outstanding clinician neuroscientists of the 20th Century.
He trained at St Thomas Hospital where, in 1956, he obtained First Class honours in an Intercalated B Sc degree, followed in 1960 by his MSc thesis on Pigmentation in the substantia nigra. After qualifying MB, BS in 1963 he was lecturer in Medicine at Tommies, then Senior Resident at Queen Square, and was then appointed Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry and King’s College Hospital Medical School, and Consultant at the Maudsley and King’s College Hospitals. At age 34 he was appointed to the newly established Chair of Neurology, and built up a superb team of fellows in neurology, neuropharmacology and neurophysiology. Whilst at King’s he was awarded the MRCPsych, followed by Fellowship of the Royal Society, and then a DSc.
After 17 years south of the Thames, he was appointed to the Chair of the Department of Clinical Neurology at Queen Square, where he worked for a further 11 years, the last three as Dean of the Institute of Neurology.
His passion was for the emerging subspecialty of Movement Disorders. He established dedicated clinics for Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders, particularly dystonia.
He was extraordinarily productive, authoring 1,368 papers, book chapters and other publications. He served on the Councils of the Royal Society, the Royal College of Physicians, and the Medical Research Council. He had 40 visiting professorships in 18 countries, and gave 38 named lectures.
Together with Stanley Fahn at Columbia University, New York, he co-founded the Movement Disorder Society in 1985 and the Movement Disorders Journal (MDJ) in 1986. He edited the Journal of Neurology and Neurosurgery for a decade, followed by MDJ, and served on the editorial boards of a further 21 journals.
His other great legacies were: establishing the UK Parkinson’s Disease Brain Bank (with Professor Andrew Lees); his magnum opus Marsden’s Book of Movement Disorders (posthumously completed by Professor Kailash Bhatia); and the many fellows who passed through his hands to become world leaders in Movement Disorders.After his three-year tenure as Dean, he took his first sabbatical, to NIH in Bethesda, but died suddenly, aged 60, after only three weeks there.
After his death, the Royal Society published a comprehensive biographical memoir written by Professors Quinn (Neurology), Jenner (Pharmacology) and Rothwell (Neurophysiology).
Charles Symonds
Symonds’ ((born 1890, died 1978) skill in clinical diagnosis and his abilities as a teacher is how he will be best remembered.
Thwarted in his initial aim of entering the Indian Civil Service after an Oxford education, Symonds defaulted to medicine, and trained at Guy’s Hospital from 1912. When war was declared on 4 August 1914, Symonds was three months short of qualifying in medicine, but on 19 August, because there were no vacancies as a pilot – his preferred role - he enlisted as a motorcycle despatch rider. Symonds went to war sustained by a spirit of patriotism and adventure. But, like others, he was soon appalled by the terrible slaughter and suffering in the trenches. On 5 November 1914, he was awarded the Médaille Militaire by the president of the French Republic for gallantry during the operations in August 1914. He was wounded in the leg and after his recovery, Symonds returned to Guy’s Hospital, qualified in 1915, and was commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps and appointed as medical officer to the Royal Flying Corps squadron at Farnborough. Symonds returned to the 101 Field Ambulance in 1917 as Captain. His accounts of trench warfare are harrowing. Participating in the Battle of Arras, he established a series of first-aid posts, and was twice struck on the head by bullets.
On demobilisation, he was appointed resident medical officer at the National Hospital. Symonds was appointed assistant physician at Guys Hospital in 1920, until 1927 when he was promoted to physician. In 1927, he applied successfully to Oxford for a Radcliffe Travelling Fellowship. His intention was to study neuropathology in Paris but Hurst suggested that he become interested in psychiatry and neurosurgery. This led to Symonds working with Harvey Cushing in Boston, and Adolf Meyer in Baltimore.
In 1926 he was appointed to the consultant staff at Queen Square. He delivered two weekly outpatient clinics, seeing 100 patients on each occasion and, subsequently, became responsible for inpatients.
In 1938 Symonds was invited by Cairns to join him at the Military Hospital for Head Injuries at St Hugh’s College in Oxford, representing the Royal Air Force to which Symonds had been civilian consultant in neurology since 1934. From 1942 he became involved with ‘flying stress’, the equivalent of ‘shell shock’, taking the view that aircrew were being misunderstood. Symonds had a busy war and his contributions were fully recognised. He served on the Flying Personnel Research Committee from 1942 to 1963; was promoted to air commodore in 1942 and air vice-marshal in 1945; made a Companion of the Bath in 1944; and knighted in 1946. He received the Raymond Longacre Award for Scientific Contribution to Aviation Medicine from the Aero-Medical Association of the USA in 1949. As a member of the Brain Injuries Committee of the Medical Research Council which, in 1941, produced War Memorandum No. 4, Symonds had defined hysteria as ‘a condition in which mental and physical symptoms, not of organic origin, are produced and maintained by motives never fully conscious directed at some real or fancied gain to be derived from such symptoms’. Symonds considered the nature of fear as a behavioural and physiological response to real, remembered or anticipated danger, conditioned by prior experience or triggers and not constrained by other emotions such as anger and loyalty. Symonds’ approach to curing hysterical illness used methods, including hypnosis, taught by Hurst, who had himself been trained by Babinski. If compensation failed to cure the complaint, recovery might require escaping from the situation with dignity, even if this involved resorting in one case to a faked religious service of thanksgiving for miraculous recovery, thereby avoiding the assumption that the illness was due to malingering. Symonds’ tactic was to strike a deal with the hysteric: ‘I know that your pretended loss of memory is the result of some intolerable emotional situation. Tell me your story. I promise absolutely to respect your confidence, will give you all the help I can and will say to your doctor and relatives that I have cured you by hypnotism.’
After WWII, now famous as a neurologist, Symonds was Sims Travelling Professor to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and visiting professor in San Francisco and Montréal. Reflecting in 1970 on his paper from 1941, in which Symonds argued for a closer liaison between students of brain and mind, he claimed (perhaps with the benefit of hindsight) ‘my conviction that there should be a chair of neurology at the Maudsley Hospital and a chair of psychiatry at the National Hospital, Queen Square, remains unshaken’. Symonds retired from his hospital posts in 1955, aged 65, but continued to see patients in private practice until his early seventies. Symonds was elected president of the Association of British Neurologists in 1956. In 1966 he was invited to teach on two or three days each month at Queen Square, relishing the opportunity to illustrate what could be achieved through clinical analysis, rather than the use of investigations that were beginning to influence the practice of neurology.
Roger William Gilliatt
Roger William Gilliatt (born 1922, died 1991). After qualification in medicine from the Middlesex Hospital in 1949, Gilliatt trained in neurology there and at the National Hospital.
He interrupted his undergraduate education in Oxford by enlisting with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in 1942. His war record was distinguished. Near Kloppenburg, he went forward alone on foot and rescued the crew of a burning tank, despite being subjected to heavy small-arms fire.
Returning to Oxford on demobilisation, Gilliatt graduated with first-class honours in physiology (1946) and was then research assistant at the Spinal Injuries Unit, Stoke Mandeville Hospital, and the University Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford. After qualification in medicine from the Middlesex Hospital in 1949, Gilliatt trained in neurology there and at the National Hospital. He was appointed to the consultant staff of both hospitals in 1955 and also began to develop a successful Harley Street private practice.
Hospital rounds were conducted with military precision. The sister placed the patients at attention in their beds, a chair at the foot for Gilliatt’s bag. In 1962 he was appointed to the foundation professorship of clinical neurology in the University of London. That Gilliatt was eventually able to effect the transformation of academic neurology depended on his vision of the field and ability to manipulate goodwill towards his own preferred position. He gave up his private practice and as the elite of between-the-wars neurology retired, Gilliatt began to dominate policy and strategy at the National Hospital and the Institute of Neurology. Gilliatt nurtured most academic neurologists in the UK in the decades that followed appointment as professor of neurology.
In retirement, Gilliatt moved to the USA and was appointed consultant in clinical neurophysiology, National Institute for Neurological Disease and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda.
Gilliatt supported and nurtured the academic activities of a small number of neurologists who worked at Queen Square from the 1960s and, through his patronage, academic neurology survived the crisis and probable demise that the attitudes of the 1950s had risked. He had the foresight that allowed Queen Square and the Institute of Neurology to justify their existence and survive the Health Service reforms of the 1990s.
Samuel Alexander Kinnier Wilson
In 1905, Wilson applied successfully for the post of resident medical officer at the National Hospital, where he was much influenced by Hughlings Jackson. In 1912 he described the eponymous Wilson’s Disease.
Wilson was born in Cedarville, New Jersey. After the death of his father, his bereaved mother brought him to Edinburgh, where his formative years were spent. He graduated cum laude from Edinburgh University in 1902 and, after a house officer post working for Sir Byron Bramwell, professor of medicine at the Royal Infirmary, won a Carnegie Research Fellowship to study neurology in Paris with Pierre Marie and Joseph Babinski. During this Wanderjahre, he immersed himself not only in the advanced anatomo-clinical methods of the Salpêtrière but also in the richness of French culture. After this two-year stage in his neurological training, Wilson moved to Germany where he worked in Leipzig with Paul Fleschig. This influential part of his training allowed Wilson to keep abreast of the extensive German literature throughout the rest of his career.
On his return to the UK in 1905, Wilson applied successfully for the post of resident medical officer at the National Hospital, where, like many others, he was much influenced by Hughlings Jackson, who had retired but continued to visit the hospital and ask the trainees to show him patients of interest.
In 1912, Wilson was appointed assistant physician at the Westminster Hospital, and a year later was promoted to assistant physician at the National Hospital. With a grant from the British Medical Association, he now embarked on a research project in Victor Horsley’s laboratory examining the effect of lesions in the lenticular nucleus in monkeys. After the First World War, he was offered a post at King’s College Hospital and a lectureship in neurology at King’s Medical School, at which point he resigned from the Westminster Hospital. In 1921, Wilson was promoted physician to outpatients at the National Hospital, and a year later became a physician with admission rights.
At the age of 30, in 1908, Wilson wrote ‘A Contribution to the Study of Apraxia’, with a scholarly review of the literature, and, in 1928, a short but highly praised monograph on aphasia. In time, Wilson became the expert on disorders of the basal ganglia. After passing the MRCP examination, Wilson had translated Meige and Feindel’s monograph Les tics et leur traitement (1902; English edition, 1907).
A few years later, he defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Edinburgh entitled ‘A Fatal Familial Nervous Disease Associated with Cirrhosis of the Liver’ whilst working as a junior doctor carrying out post-mortem examinations at the National Hospital. In the dissertation, he described four children or young adults with a rapidly progressive neurological syndrome characterised by tremor, difficulty in swallowing and speaking, muscular weakness, spasticity and fixed dystonic contractures, which he named ‘progressive lenticular degeneration’.
This outstanding piece of work was awarded the Gold Medal by the university in 1911. A brief version appeared in the Lancet, but the following year Wilson published the definitive account in Brain, emphasising the clinical relevance of damage to the lenticular nucleus and the important coexistence of liver cirrhosis. Wilson included an addendum relating to a patient already described by Völsch that he felt sure was an example of progressive lenticular degeneration, and he also unearthed a typical case in Friedrich Theodor von Frerichs’ ‘Klinik der Leberkrankheiten’ (1858–61). Wilson also acknowledged the earlier reports by his senior colleagues at Queen Square. The 1912 paper rehearsed Gowers’ previous case, with further details of another affected family member provided to Wilson by the index case’s mother. Details of Ormerod’s patient were supplemented by access to the case notes at Queen Square.
Following the review of prior examples, Wilson then reported in detail on the four cases personally observed, of whom three came to autopsy. Wilson provided the most authoritative account of what later came to be recognised as the first treatable metabolic disorder of the brain, in this instance caused by a disorder of copper transport. The paper also offered a new approach to research on motor function of the basal ganglia and demonstrated conclusively that lesions of the lenticular nucleus result in abnormal involuntary movements.
Quite when his Greco-Latin rubric lost favour and became ‘Wilson’s disease’ is uncertain but the eponym was probably adopted by German neurologists who, along with the French, were the first to appreciate the importance of Wilson’s work. In the UK, Greenfield and Denny-Brown were using the eponym by the mid-1930s and, in later life, Wilson was only too happy to refer to ‘my disease’. He vehemently rejected von Strumpell and Westphal’s claims to precedence, arguing that they had failed to emphasise the importance of hepatic pathology. However, Wilson did not like use of the term ‘abdominal Wilson’s disease’ by liver specialists. What Wilson had missed, and continued to deny through most of his career, was the distinctive green ring of copper deposited on Descemet’s membrane of the cornea, first described by Kaiser (1902) and by Fleischer (1903).
His Croonian lectures (1925) were on disorders of motility and muscle tone, in which Wilson speculated that the tremor of Parkinsonism must originate in the cerebral cortex through the influence of the striatum and pallidum. The presentation was illustrated with some of his own cinematographic films recorded in Queen Square. Wilson was among the first to demonstrate persistence of the glabellar tap, which for a while was known at Queen Square as ‘Wilson’s sign’.
In 1920, Wilson founded the Journal of Neurology and Psychopathology, and the contents of the journal reflect Wilson’s interest in psychiatry and medical psychology, perhaps stemming from his continental training.
He read and spoke German and French fluently, travelled widely and had many influential friends in continental Europe and America, explaining why Wilson commanded a far greater reputation overseas than at home. He became a friend of Charlie Chaplin, and on one of his many American trips was invited to Chaplin’s Californian ranch. This encounter may have also led to his early interest in the use of cinematography as an aid to the teaching of neurology.
The other major achievement for which Wilson is remembered in the UK is his encyclopaedic two volume 1,838-page textbook Neurology (1940) with its 276 illustrations and 16 plates.
Anita Harding
Anita Harding (1952 - 1995) was the leading clinical scientist of her day and pioneer of neurogenetics.
Anita Harding was the leading clinical scientist of her day. A pioneer of neurogenetics, remembered for the insightful way in which she anticipated the entry of molecular genetics into neurology. Anita Harding was the leading clinical scientist of her day who sadly died shortly before her 43rd birthday, having been ill for only five months.
Her early death denied Harding the many accolades and appointments that her combination of personality and ability would inevitably have yielded. Neurology never benefitted to the full from the many further contributions and outstanding leadership that she would surely have provided. Harding’s clinical wisdom, enthusiasm, talent for research and extraordinary personality epitomise all that is valued most in a clinical scientist.
A pioneer of neurogenetics, she is remembered for the insightful way in which she anticipated the entry of molecular genetics into neurology. Despite her vision, Harding was unable to participate in the discoveries that modern molecular medicine made possible, and a generation of neurologists trained since the mid-1990s lost the opportunity of mentorship and supervision by an outstanding clinical neurologist. There is no sense in which these losses might be considered speculative or judged ambiguous. Anita Harding was on a trajectory to greatness that was unstoppable. Her achievements in a career that was active from 1977 until a few days before her death were already outstanding and, as the leading clinician scientist of her generation working in the UK, Harding already ranked as a major figure in late twentieth-century world neurology.
Training in medicine at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, she graduated in 1975, winning a number of undergraduate prizes. As a student, she visited the neurological department of the Montréal General Hospital. After hospital appointments at the Royal Free with Professor Dame Sheila Sherlock and P. K. Thomas, and in Oxford, she worked first at the National Hospital in 1977 and subsequently joined Cedric Carter as a research fellow in the MRC Clinical Genetics Unit at the Institute of Child Health. Thus began the work that was to shape her short career. First, she classified monogenic diseases of the nervous system, with an emphasis on the hereditary ataxias and peripheral neuropathies.
These studies formed the basis for her doctoral thesis on ‘The Hereditary Ataxias and Paraplegias: A Clinical and Genetic Study’; for this work, she was awarded the Clinical Genetics Society prize and the Edith Pechey Phipson Postgraduate Scholarship from her medical school. Later, she reworked the text into a monograph on The Hereditary Ataxias and Related Disorders (1984). Her single most important discovery, published in Nature with Ian Holt and John Morgan-Hughes in 1986, was the first identification of a mitochondrial DNA mutation in human disease and the concept of tissue heteroplasmy of mutant mitochondrial DNA. Anita also published on the spectrum of trinucleotide repeat disorders in neurodegenerative disease, and on the population genetics of diseases showing ethnic or geographic restriction. She secured substantial grant support for her work, supervised five doctoral theses, wrote almost 200 original articles, over 100 reviews or chapters, edited 3 books in addition to her monograph, gave 100 presentations at scientific meetings, and delivered more than 200 invited lectures in the United Kingdom and abroad.
In the year before taking up her post as senior lecturer and honorary consultant at the Institute of Neurology in 1986, Harding visited laboratories in Cardiff (UK), the California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Seattle, Duke and Denver (USA). These visits proved pivotal in matching her clinical expertise with a knowledge of the emerging discipline of molecular genetics. The subsequent rise in her career was rapid. She was appointed reader in the University of London and honorary consultant neurologist to the National Hospital in 1987, elected to a personal professorship in 1990, and to the post she never occupied as head of the university department in 1995.
That so much was achieved by the age of 43, in a career that was fully active for only ten years, is sobering; that it was done in a style from which respect and friendships grew exponentially is a mark of her personality.
Sir Victor Horsley
Sir Victor Horsley (1857-1916) was the first neurosurgeon appointed to the National Hospital Queen Square, and was known worldwide as the ‘Father of Neurosurgery’.
Neurology and neurosurgery
After studying medicine at University College Hospital, Horsley took up surgical roles from 1880. He was the first to be appointed to a hospital position at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic in Bloomsbury (1886), when he undertook his first brain operation. The National Hospital didn’t have an operating theatre so he modified a day room. Among the operating ‘firsts’ following Horsley’s appointment, were the first removal of a tumour from the spinal cord (1887) and the first carotid ligation (binding of the artery) for a cerebral aneurysm, while his experimental work on the thyroid gland paved the way for many modern treatments in pituitary disease.
Horsley was arguably without peer in successful intracranial operations before 1890. One modern worldwide historical survey of brain surgery states that he ‘may legitimately be called the first neurosurgeon’.
During his career at the National Hospital he successfully transformed patients’ lives by pioneering resective neurosurgery for epilepsy, tumours, abscess, head injury, spinal and pituitary disease, and trigeminal neuralgia, in an era where there were no x-rays or antibiotics.
He also co-developed the Horsley-Clarke stereotaxic apparatus which enabled the accurate pinpointing of a particular area of the brain for treatment. In terms of scientific landmarks, its invention has been compared to that of the telescope and microscope. Another of Horsley’s innovations was an antiseptic compound of beeswax and almond oil – known as ‘Horsley’s Wax’ – which is still used to stem bleeding from the cranial vault.
Between 1883 and 1891 he was Professor-Superintendent of the Brown Institution in Wandsworth Road, established to carry out research ‘useful to man’ and where he specialised in studying the functions in the brain and spinal cord.
He was a brilliant experimentalist, elected as FRS at the age of 29 years for his work on cerebral localization and comparative anatomy. He also worked also on rabies, vaccine, antisepsis, anaesthesia and military medicine.
Political Reform
In addition to his pioneering neurosurgical work, Sir Victor Horsley was a powerful debater and orator, reforming a number of medical organisations including the GMC and BMA, for whom he served as president.
He was an iconoclast and social reformer, active in the Temperance Movement, a supporter of female suffrage, health care of the working class, vivisection and medical reform. Twice he stood unsuccessfully for parliament, as a Liberal, and he actively supported Lloyd George’s health insurance reforms, a stance that put him at odds with many in the medical profession.
The War
Although he was fifty-seven at the outbreak of the First World War, Horsley volunteered for active service. He was sent first to the Dardenelles, after which he volunteered to go to Mesopotamia. Characteristically, Horsley fought hard to improve conditions for the care of wounded and diseased troops, but died of heatstroke on 16 July 1916 at a military hospital at Amara, near Baghdad; he was also buried there.
Honours and awards
He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Society, and was knighted in 1902. The National Hospital has a ward and department after him in honour of his contribution to neurosurgery.
Pat Harris
Pat Harris was Assistant Secretary for Students at UCL Queen Square Institute Neurology until 1989.
After leaving school Pat took a secretarial course before working at the Middlesex hospital where she trained as an audiological technician, performing speech and hearing tests. After a spell of secretarial work she joined the Institute of Neurology at Queen Square, and in 1973 she was appointed Academic Registrar.
A large part of Pat’s job involved looking after doctors who came from overseas to train in neurology. She acted as “confidante, friend and adviser of whole generations of students from all over the world”. Altogether Pat spent 23 years at Queen Square. After retirement Pat set up the Queen Square Alumnus Association https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ion/alumnus-association and edited 29 editions keeping alumni updated on news from Queen Square and the wider neurological community.
When she left, she donated a sum of money as an annual award to the student with the highest overall mark for the Diploma in Clinical Neurology. This prize was given each year from 1989 until 2011.
Upon her death, Pat left a very generous legacy that created four, 4-year studentships in Neurodegenerative disease.
Margery Ling
Margery Ling (born 1916– died 1982). Miss Ling came to the National Hospital in 1943 as nurse–tutor and was appointed matron in 1946. She was a formidable but humorous and remarkable person, whose priority was the care of patients. She remembered their names and visited most on each ward once or twice daily. She employed young, often handicapped, women with epilepsy ‘from good homes’ as domestic staff in order to provide them with shelter, employment and a sense of dignity and belonging. Many of these women worked at the hospital for 30 or 40 years, despite having regular epileptic fits. She did a round every day and knew everyone, including porters and kitchen staff and their stories, held tea parties each afternoon for selected doctors and senior staff members, and was known to take patients out in her vintage open-topped Sunbeam tourer for a ride around London. Every Christmas, she held a party for the children of staff and patients, which sadly also came to an end on her death. She also played a prominent role in the organisation of the centenary celebrations and was one of the hospital’s most dedicated servants.
Her influence extended beyond Queen Square and, in 1948, she had led a tour of nursing staff to the MRC Nutritional Field Station at Fajar in the Gambia. In 1950, Miss Ling visited the Claremont Hospital for Nervous Diseases in Belfast to investigate the possibility of providing assistance with training. A scheme was devised whereby a few trained nurses would be sent to Belfast, and Queen Square would receive many untrained nurses in exchange, at a time when the perennial shortage of nursing staff in London was particularly acute. This was a mutually advantageous arrangement and, in 1963, Miss Ling was made honorary life governor of the Claremont Street Hospital.
Always preferring the title ‘matron’ and refusing to call herself ‘chief nursing officer’, she declined any official farewell or presentation on retirement in 1981. Margery Ling had made the hospital her life and she maintained the traditional values of nursing which had descended directly from Florence Nightingale. Because of her influence, nursing standards at the hospital were very high.
Risien Russell
James Samuel Risien Russell (born 1863, died 1939) was appointed resident medical officer at the National Hospital (1888), In the 1890s, he was appointed professor of medicine at University College.
James Samuel Risien Russell was born in Demerara (now British Guyana) where his Scottish father was the owner of a sugar plantation and one of the island’s richest men. Risien (as he was often called) attended the Dollar Academy and then graduated in medicine in Edinburgh (1886). He worked at St Thomas’ Hospital, in Nottingham, at the London Metropolitan Hospital as pathologist, and was appointed resident medical officer at the National Hospital (1888), pathologist (1895–7), assistant physician (1898), physician to the outpatients (1899) and full physician (1909–28). He was president of the neurology section of the Royal Society of Medicine, and appointed to the Board of Management of the National Hospital. He served as a captain in the First World War, based in London, and was especially interested in the treatment of shell-shock.
He was the author or co-author of a number of research articles. He contributed articles on neurological disease to Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine, Allbutt’s A System of Medicine, the Encyclopaedia Medica, and Gibson’s Textbook of Medicine.
Russell served as vice-president of the Section of Psychological Medicine and Neurology at the annual meeting of the BMA in London in 1910. He was elected a corresponding member of the Société de Neurologie de Paris.
He was a very popular teacher and sociable person. He had an enormous private practice, and was said to specialise particularly in the treatment of psychotic and psychoneurotic patients, who appreciated his charm and understanding. Critchley includes him among the pioneer neurologists in the Ventricle of Memory (1990), reporting that he exuded great charm and friendliness and was elegant with excellent taste. He wrote: ‘as House Physician, I would wait in the front hall of the hospital for his arrival. His Rolls-Royce car drove up and the chauffeur alighted to open the door for him. Risien bounded up the stairs two or three at a time, his movements being as quick as those of an athlete. As he made his way round the wards, he had a kind word of praise, or even flattery, for each patient. Each one felt buoyed up after the remarks he made smilingly, even though he never carried out a physical examination … Today, Risien Russell is forgotten. In his time, he was one of the most important and colourful figures within the medical profession of Great Britain. He was a sincere friend and wise counsellor, and I mourn his passing.’ He was renowned for unmatched dedication to his patients and, worn out by work, he died in his consulting room in Wimpole Street and is buried in Highgate cemetery (Windrush Foundation).
John Marshall
John Marshall (born 1922, died 2014) was Professor of Clinical Neurology and former Dean of the Institute of Neurology between 1982 and 1987.
He graduated in medicine from Manchester University in 1946 and worked in that city, the Maudsley Hospital, briefly as a research fellow at the National Hospital, and in Oxford and Edinburgh before returning to Queen Square where he was appointed to the newly established readership in 1956. He held a personal professorship between 1971 and 1987 in the Institute of Neurology.
He led research at Queen Square in stroke (with Ralph Ross Russell, Lindsay Symon and George du Boulay). Marshall’s work was wide-ranging: the introduction of rehabilitation; work on epidemiology and familial incidence of cerebrovascular disease; resolving mechanisms of tissue injury in transient ischaemic attack, preferring the concept of platelet embolization to that of hypotension and arterial spasm; the development of intra-arterial and intravenous methods for quantifying blood flow; determining systems for distinguishing vascular dementia from Alzheimer’s disease; conducting treatment trials of anticoagulation in ischaemic stroke, and aspirin in amaurosis fugax; early applications of the EMI scan and scintigram imaging in stroke; and the first nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) scan in subdural haematoma.
Apart from his areas of research, mainly stroke, Marshall directed the intensive care unit at Queen Square, where he introduced negative pressure ventilation (the ‘iron lung’) for the treatment of poliomyelitis, using a design from the Cowley factory in Oxford, and, subsequently, positive pressure ventilation. He supported speech therapy as a clinical and academic discipline based on techniques learned from the Australian therapist Lionel Logue, who had treated the stutter of King George VI, and it was Marshall who affiliated the College of Speech Sciences with Queen Square. Marshall served as dean of the Institute of Neurology from 1982 to 1987. In that capacity, he was instrumental in bringing David Marsden to Queen Square as Roger Gilliatt’s successor. In retirement, Marshall was chairman of the Board of Governors at the National Hospital for Epilepsy at Chalfont St Peter, and led the successful appeal for the magnetic resonance scanner dedicated to research in epilepsy.
MacDonald Critchley
In 1923, Critchley moved to the National Hospital where he became Risien Russell’s last house physician. Critchley was a prolific writer, publishing more than 300 single-author journal articles.
Tall, slim and always impeccably dressed, Macdonald Critchley cast an imposing and handsome figure. Aged just 15, he was offered a place to read medicine at the University of Bristol but, deemed too young to go to university and already fluent in French and Latin, Critchley stayed on at school and taught himself ancient Greek and a smattering of Russian. His graduation from medical school was delayed by the first world war and Critchley graduated from Bristol Medical School with first-class honours at the age of 21.
In 1923, Critchley moved to the National Hospital where he became Risien Russell’s last house physician. After only three years’ training in neurology, Critchley was appointed to the staff at Queen Square and then also at King’s College Hospital, where he worked with Kinnier Wilson.
Critchley was a prolific writer, publishing many books and more than 300 single-author journal articles over a period of six decades – starting in his early twenties, when he was a resident, through to his nineties.
As a junior doctor, Critchley published on neurological complications of disordered calcium metabolism and movement disorders. He reinforced Marie’s concepts of arteriosclerotic Parkinson’s syndrome, and wrote important papers – which are still read – on essential tremors and occupational cramps. He was also one of the first neurologists to investigate the neglected field of the neurological consequences of ageing, including ‘soft extrapyramidal signs’, and he described the ‘striatal variety’ of the punch-drunk syndrome in which Parkinsonism is a striking feature.
A recurring topic of interest was speech, with books on The Language of Gesture (1939), Aphasiology and Other Aspects of Language (1970) and Silent Language (1975) in which Critchley discusses the neurology of gesture, ‘hearing eyes’, and deaf mute signing. A related interest was dyslexia. Critchley’s first article on reading and writing difficulties in children appeared in 1927, in which he discusses mirror-writing, a topic on which he had already published a small monograph. Critchley returned to the topic of reading in Developmental Dyslexia (1964), reissued with revisions as The Dyslexic Child (1970). With Ronald Henson, Critchley edited a volume of essays on Music and the Brain (1977), with a foreword by Sir Michael Tippett. This contains the definitive description of musicogenic epilepsy.
Critchley’s fascination for the unusual and the bizarre led him to stray outside the conservative and formal boundaries of neurology in these essays and lectures. Against this background of prolific and eclectic writing, Critchley’s most important monograph was on The Parietal Lobes (1953). This classic monograph remains an important analysis and source of reference. At Queen Square, he was considered the great authority on higher cerebral function and a worthy successor to Hughlings Jackson and Bastian. Some of his outstanding neurological achievements continue to resurface, including a well-documented case of a patient with clinical features that would have fulfilled all the consensus criteria for semantic dementia, not widely recognised until the 1980s but fully described in his case notes of 1938.
Critchley had the great gift of being able to distil ideas and make these accessible to other people. He was a brilliant teacher, who attracted students from around the world, and his controlled showmanship guaranteed a packed house at the Wednesday afternoon and Saturday morning clinical demonstrations at Queen Square. His delivery was unhurried, given without notes, and his interaction with the patient showed great tact and ingenuity. His style was to place diseases of the nervous system in their historical context and, although competent at eliciting physical signs, this was not his forte. He used various ingenious instruments: a black-and-white tie, which he sometimes removed to demonstrate optokinetic nystagmus; a tendon hammer inscribed ‘with admiration … from the Mayo clinic’; a large coloured hatpin; an alarm on his watch that he used to startle students; and, for eliciting the plantar response, a carved ivory hand given to him by Babinski, a gold cornuto purchased in Italy by his second wife Eileen, and a feather, discarded by a pigeon in Queen Square and provided to him by Sister Magnusson, or one from a flamingo picked up in San Diego zoo. Critchley carried a special bag filled with unusual objects which he would ask the patient to handle or answer questions about when examining the higher centres. Critchley was a neurologist appreciated far more in continental Europe and the Americas than at home. In fulfilling his responsibilities as president of both the World Federation of Neurology and the International League Against Epilepsy, he was the first Queen Square physician to travel extensively and lecture all over the world.
His lucid biographies and colourful essays on Jackson and Gowers, and his teachers Holmes, Ferrier, Wilson and Collier, enriched for many years the hagiography and folklore of Queen Square for its many alumni and visitors from around the world.
Athasit Vejjajiva
Professor Athasit Vejjajiva has been the most outstanding neurologist in Thailand.
Athasit Vejjajiva, MBBS (Lond), Hon. FRCP (Glasg). FRCP, FRCP(T), FRACP, FACP, FACTM, FANA (born 1935) was Professor of Neurology and former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand, and former Rector of Mahidol University. He was also the former President of the Royal College of Physicians of Thailand and Vice-President of the World Federation of Neurology.
He was awarded an MBBS (Lond) from Guy’s Hospital. He had training in Neurology at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square, under Dr. Denis Brinton, FRCP, Dr. Denis Williams, DSc, FRCP, and Dr. Swithin Meadows, and in Neurosurgery at Maida Vale under Mr. Valentine Logue, FRCS, FRCP. At that time, he also met Dr. Ralph Ross Russell who became his close friend. Subsequently, he had further neurological training at the Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI), Newcastle-upon-Tyne, as a senior house officer (SHO) under Professor Henry Miller, who, being both his mentor and idol, would later speak highly of him. Dr. Gerald Stern was first assistant, and Dr. Christopher Blaiklock and Dr. (Sir) Graham Teasdale were also SHOs to Professor Miller at the time. As a research fellow there, he did some clinical research in multiple sclerosis with Dr. Charles Simpson in the laboratory in Newcastle General Hospital (NGH). During that time, he met Dr. John (Lord) Walton in the weekly joint conference between RVI and NGH.
His career in Thailand has been very distinguished and, as a pioneer, his contribution to medicine and neurology in Thailand has been outstanding. He established the Division of Neurology in the Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University. He is internationally recognised. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1976 and also received the fellowship of other national Colleges of Physicians. He has organised a number of international congresses including the Asian and Oceanian Congress of Neurology and was invited to give lectures in international neurological congresses on several occasions. He was Vice-President of the World Federation of Neurology from 1997 to 2001.
Many of his colleagues and students respected and admired him for his excellent clinical skills and teaching. Over the years in Thailand, he inspired his students with his remarkable teaching and extensive knowledge in medicine and neurology. Consequently, many students have followed his path and become neurologists too. He has maintained his connection with friends in the UK, particularly in Queen Square and Newcastle-upon-Tyne who have kindly supported his students to train in neurology there. His field of interest and research was in neuromuscular diseases, particularly myasthenia gravis. He saw and treated many patients with this condition, who respected and trusted him greatly. He was also interested in tropical neurology, especially infections of the central nervous system, multiple sclerosis and related disorders. Apart from his outstanding academic ability, he was also an accomplished administrator. He was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University from 1986 to 1995, Rector of Mahidol University from 1995 to 1999 and Deputy Minister of Health from 1991 to 1992.
He is married to Professor Sodsai Vejjajiva, an immunologist, who worked at the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. They have two daughters and one son. The eldest is Professor Alisa Wacharasindhu (Jib), a child psychiatrist, the second is Miss Ngampun Vejjajiva (Jane), a writer and recipient of the SEA Write Award in 2006, and the youngest is Mr. Abhisit Vejjajiva (Mark), the 27th Prime Minister of Thailand. It so happened that Abhisit and Mr. Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, were classmates and close friends at Eton College. Many years back, Boris visited Abhisit’s home in Thailand and stayed with his family for a few weeks.
Eddie Phiroz Bharucha
Born 27th December 1916 - Deceased 14th December, 2017 Pioneer of Neurology in India.
President of the World Congress of Neurology (1989), vice president of the World Federation of Neurology (1969-1973), honorary member of the Association of British Neurologists, special member of the International Cerebral Palsy Society, and honorary member of the American Neurological Association.
P.C. Bharucha was part of the group of highly qualified Indian physicians who vigorously pushed their claim for academic positions in Grant Medical College on a par with the British members of the Indian Medical Service. Their efforts for justice resulted in the formation of a medical college, which facilitated academic advancement of Indian doctors as a matter of policy.
Eddie completed his MBBS and MD in both Bombay and London. He was appointed Honorary Physician in Medicine at the King Edward Memorial and Seth G S Medical College (KEM) Hospital in 1945.
Between 1949 and 1952, he trained in neurology at the Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square, and the Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London. He then proceeded to the United States where he worked under Dr. Houston Merritt at Columbia University and Dr. Denny Brown at Boston City Hospital, spending three months with each. He returned to India in 1952 and became the first neurophysician to establish a department of neurology in India, with 12 beds at the KEM Hospital in January 1953.
By the time he retired, as emeritus professor in 1974, the KEM Hospital had all of the core elements of the clinical neurosciences, including large epilepsy and neurology outpatient clinics which drew and still draw a large number of patients from all over the country, as well as neuropathology, electroencephalography and electromyography. The department of neurology had now established a reputation nationally and internationally for excellence in patient care, teaching, and academic endeavours. Dr. Bharucha later joined the Bombay Hospital, a large private hospital which also has a strong sense of social responsibility, and which subsequently became a teaching hospital.
Together with his wife, the late Dr. Piloo Bharucha, he promoted and practiced multidisciplinary care in paediatric neurology long before this became entrenched in more developed economies. From the mid 1950s onwards, the couple ran clinics for neurological and paediatric assessment of children with poliomyelitis and cerebral palsy at what was formerly the Children’s Orthopedic Hospital. He also played a pivotal role in establishing the Spastics Society of India (now ADAPT, or Able Disabled All People Together).
Positions held domestically included co-founder of the Indian Epilepsy Association, membership of the Neurological Society of India (he was president in 1961), the council of National Academy of Medical Sciences, inspector of the Medical Council of India, examiner for the DM (Doctor of Medicine) and DNB (Diplomate of National Board) exams throughout India, honorary Lieutenant Colonel in the Armed Forces and physician to the Reserve Bank of India. He received the Dhanvantari Award in 1991 for his outstanding contributions to medical sciences, in particular in the field of neurology.
Overseas, he was the president of the World Congress of Neurology (1989), vice president of the World Federation of Neurology (1969-1973), honorary member of the Association of British Neurologists, special member of the International Cerebral Palsy Society, and honorary member of the American Neurological Association.
His research and publications pertained to stroke, neurological infections (tuberculous meningitis, postconjunctival myeloradiculopathy), nutritional disorders (especially the relationship between vitamin B, malnutrition, and chronic alcoholism), toxic disorders (lathyrism and mass screening of those exposed to toxic gas in Bhopal within a week of the tragedy), congenital abnormalities (atlantoaxial dislocation), and epilepsy and epidemiology of neurological diseases in the Parsi community. He was on the editorial advisory board of the Handbook of Clinical Neurology.
Dr. Bharucha was a consummate physician who relied on clinical assessment rather than imaging studies. Notwithstanding his academic achievements and his work to advance the practice of neurosciences, his primary concern always remained the best interests of his patients. This, combined with his deep empathy (particularly toward the underprivileged) and an ingrained sense of social responsibility, led to his involvement in several projects aimed at alleviating the stigma and distress suffered by those with neurological disorders. One example of this was his 12-year campaign which ultimately led to the repeal of a law that deemed people with epilepsy to be insane. Another was his importing (at his own expense) an early EEG machine for the KEM Hospital, part by part. He also imported (again at personal expense) medicines not available in India at that time, such as d-penicillamine for a patient with Wilson’s disease. Finally, his contributions during the riots of Partition, in 1947, should be mentioned. He was among a group of doctors from the KEM Hospital that went to Lahore, where they provided medical relief. Using the Sir Gangaram Hospital as a base, they visited various refugee camps, escorted by troops from the Gurkha regiment. The trip was organized by Lady Edwina Mountbatten and Dr. Jiwraj Mehta. In 2004, his students, friends, and family created the Eddie and Piloo Bharucha Fund at the World Neurology Foundation to support a perennial named lectureship at the World Congresses of Neurology.
Noshir H. Wadia
Born 20th January 20, 1925 - Deceased 10th April 10, 2016.
Wadia was universally regarded as the “founder of contemporary Indian neurology.”
Wadia was emeritus director of the department of neurology, Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre and consultant for life at Grant Medical College and Sir JJ Group of Hospitals — a unique honour bestowed on him upon his retirement. He became deeply involved with the World Federation of Neurology (WFN) from its inception in 1957. He was invited to be a founding member of the first Commission of Tropical Neurology in 1961 at Buenos Aires, Argentina. His interest in this field continued, and he became secretary and later chairman of the tropical neurology research group. He also took an active interest in the ataxia research group, which he chaired for more than a decade until 2001. He has served as either chair or member of the education, steering, long range planning, membership, and nomination committees. He served as vice president between 1989 and 1993. In recognition of his outstanding contributions to the WFN, he was awarded the first WFN Gold Medal for services to international neurology in 2009 during the World Congress of Neurology in Bangkok.
His early and pre-medical education was at St. Xavier’s School and College in Bombay. He always wanted to be a doctor and joined Grant Medical College and Sir JJ Group of Hospitals in 1943. He subsequently went to England and successfully obtained MRCP (London) at the first attempt in March 1952. Between 1952 and 1956, Wadia pursued his neurology training initially with G.F. Rowbotham in the neurosurgery department, Newcastle General Hospital, and subsequently under legendary neurologist Sir Russell Brain at London’s Maida Vale Hospital. In 1954, Brain appointed him a registrar at the London hospital — the first Asian to be appointed as registrar.
Wadia returned to Bombay in 1957 and joined his alma mater as an honorary consultant neurologist. Between 1957 and 1961, he established the department of neurology there, in spite of being inundated with work, with a paucity of funds and equipment, and in the days when a licence was required to obtain any medical equipment. This department grew and had a formidable reputation by the time he retired in 1982. In 1973, while still at the Sir JJ Group of Hospitals, he established another neurology department at the Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre, a private trust hospital, and helped the department gain recognition for postgraduate training.
During his tenure at Sir J.J. Group of Hospitals, Wadia noticed that the prevalence of neurological diseases was different from what he had seen during his training in England. An astute clinician, he diagnosed manganese poisoning in miners, myelopathy associated with congenital atlantoaxial dislocation, tuberculous spinal meningitis, and Wilson’s disease. His seminal contribution was in identifying an autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxia with slow eye movements and documented the degeneration of neurons in the parapontine reticular formation (PPRF) in collaboration with colleagues from Germany. This exemplary work was spread over several decades through sheer dint of hard work and perseverance. His other seminal contribution was the identification of a new polio-like illness following acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis in 1971, later designated as EV70 disease. His work was published in high-impact international journals, and his book, Neurological Practice — An Indian Perspective, was published in 2005 with a second edition in 2014.
He was the the recipient of many awards. Among these, the fellowship of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), which is rarely awarded to a clinician, and the SS Bhatnagar INSA Medal for Excellence in General Science. He was also committed to the functioning of Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute of Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum, Kerala, and was appointed as president and chancellor of the Institute from 1995-2002 by the government of India. He believed in neurological social responsibility, and was a trustee or founding member of several societies for the welfare of patients with neurological disorders. On January 26, 2012, the government of India conferred the Padma Bhushan Award to him in recognition of his services to neurology. He inspired several generations of neurologists now practicing in India and abroad.
*John Clifford Richardson M.D., B.Sc. (Med.), F.R.C.P. ©; F.R.C.P. (London) *
Born 1909 - Deceased 1986.
As much as any individual, “Ric” Richardson influenced training of neurologists in Canada. At the age of 17 he started a course in Medicine at the University of Toronto from which he graduated in 1932. As an undergraduate he was awarded the David Dunlop prize in psychiatry. His interest in the brain sciences began as an undergraduate and was strengthened by an elective in neuroanatomy with Professor Eric Linell. He undertook an internship at the Toronto General Hospital thereby establishing an association with the hospital that continued throughout the rest of his life. He was then appointed to one of three senior internships in medicine under Professor Duncan Graham. This was followed by a year as autopsy fellow at the Banting Institute under Professor Oskar Klotz where he qualified for the B.Sc. (Med.). He decided to specialise in neurology and in 1935 came to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square. After six months he became one of the few Canadians to be appointed house physician at the hospital, spending two years apprenticed to G M Holmes, J Purdon Martin, C P Symonds, Macdonald Critchley, and D E Denny-Brown. Part of this time was spent in neuropathology with Godwin Greenfield which led to his first paper, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, on haematomyelia. In 1937 he took the Membership examination for the Royal College of Physicians of London and was elected to Fellowship in 1955.
In 1937 he returned to the Banting Institute as a fellow with Eric Linell who had recently established a Department of Neuropathology. During the year, he carried out pathological studies that served as the basis for the widely cited paper on cerebral aneurysm published with Herbert Hyland in Medicine in 1941. In 1938 he joined the staff of the Department of Medicine at the Toronto General as a clinical instructor in neurology and medicine. In January, 1940 he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps and in June was posted to the No. I Canadian Neurological Hospital in Basingstoke, England. In 1942 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel he became officer in charge of the neurological division of the hospital, later travelling to Europe as advisor in neuropsychiatry to several hospitals. While at Basingstoke, he collaborated with Hyland in a study of psychoneurosis in the military which was subsequently published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. For his work at Basingstoke, he was awarded the M.B.E. in 1945.
On returning to Toronto in August, 1945 he re-established his practice in neurology and his appointment in the Department of Medicine at the Toronto General Hospital and continued to spend some time in neuropathology. With Drs. Hyland and Alan Walters, a Neurosis Unit was established at the Wellesley Hospital where he continued to be active until 1960. In 1946, he became certified in neurology and psychiatry by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and was admitted to Fellowship. With Drs. Armour, Hyland and Walters, he was attached to the neurology service on Ward H until it was divided up among the public wards at the Toronto General in 1948. On the retirement of Dr. Hyland in 1960, Richardson became Head of the Division of Neurology and proceeded to establish the first comprehensive training programme for neurology in Canada. The programme was a model for the integrated specialty training programmes in medicine at the University of Toronto. In 1972, the special role of neurology within the Department of Medicine was recognised through the establishment of a Chair and Dr. Richardson became the first Professor of Neurology. He retired from his University post in 1975, continuing in active practice until the months before he died and maintaining his long standing interests in industrial neurology as a consultant for the Workmen’s Compensation Board of Ontario and in medico-legal neurology.
Although his major academic contribution was the development of the training programme in neurology, he continued to publish clinical papers on a variety of subjects, including papers on post-traumatic syndromes, hypoglycemia and metabolic encephalopathies, aphasia, stroke and post-anoxic myoclonus. He is best known for the delineation of the distinctive degenerative brain disease “progressive supranuclear palsy” carried out with John Steele and Jerzy Olszewski.
Dr. Richardson was elected to membership of the American Neurological Association in 1947. He was a founding member of the Canadian Neurological Society, its first Secretary Treasurer and its President in 1954. He was Chairman of the Committee in Neurology of the Royal College of Physicians and President of the Medico-Legal Society of Toronto. In 1974, he was elected to Honorary Membership of the Association of British Neurologists. On his retirement he was honoured by his former trainees who endowed a University Lectureship in his name. In 1982 he received the Sesquicentennial award of the University of Toronto.
As much as any individual, “Ric” Richardson influenced training of neurologists in Canada. Beginning after the Second World War up to 1978 he took a very personal role in the instruction of trainees in the clinical discipline of neurology. Initially the trainees were “fellows” for one year who cared for his private patients in hospital and later residents in the integrated three year programme that he established at the University of Toronto. When he retired, four of his former trainees were directors of their own training programmes in Canada. His approach to teaching was largely influenced by his own teachers, in particular Duncan Graham, Charles Symonds and Gordon Holmes. Graham was remembered for his honesty, firm convictions, dedication and for his memorable clinical demonstrations in which students were repeatedly challenged. Above all, he was influenced by Holmes’ ideas and approach during his time at Queen Square. He held the strong conviction that proper teaching of neurology necessitated total immersion in a dedicated neurology service. No matter one’s prior clinical experience, neurology could only be learned by a return to the basics of individual comprehensive history-taking, meticulous physical examination and accurate concise recording of clinical data. Patient workups were to be submitted to detailed and critical review, not by a slightly more senior trainee but by expert faculty with subsequent discussion of the anatomical and pathophysiologic formulation. This approach required a disciplined service and teaching faculty where patients and trainees were well known. All of Dr. Richardson’s trainees spent several months under his direct supervision, usually in the first year of the programme. The central events were his Wednesday and Saturday morning clinical teaching rounds beginning sharply at 8 o'clock. The selected trainee assembled X-rays and EEGs, presented the new admissions to be checked in detail by Dr. Richardson and reviewed the progress of old patients. The rounds lasted two hours and were serious and workmanlike. At the end, there was coffee, small talk and a sense of accomplishment (and relief) for the trainee in the limelight. Dr. Richardson would then check the written histories and write his own notes. In subsequent rounds, he would return with references for the trainee to read and search. He remained active clinically until a few months before his death, participating in rounds and maintaining an active interest in the neurology programme.