The Turnstone A Doctor's Story

by Dean, Geoffrey

• ISBN13: 9780853237570
• ISBN10: 0853237573
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-02-01
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Summary

In this vivid and compelling memoir, Dr. Geoffrey Dean tells the story of his lifetime of travel, medical practice, and groundbreaking research. Born in Wales in 1918, Dean spent his early years in the north of England. After training to be a doctor in Liverpool, he served during the Second World War as a medical officer in Bomber Command. Following the war, as he recounts here, Dean relocated himself and his family to South Africa, where he established a busy medical practice that he continued for more than twenty years. During this period, he kept at the forefront of medical research, devoting the bulk of his attention to the epidemiology of porphyria, a disease that causes paralysis. All the while, his work kept him traveling, with stops in China, Sweden, Holland, Cyprus, and Spain--including a period as the personal physician to the millionaire governor of the Fiji Islands. Threaded through with surprising adventures and rich anecdotes of the author's travels in the course of his research, The Turnstone is a lively account of the life of a man whose commitment to medicine brought him to the ends of the earth--and kept him there for more than sixty years.

Author Biography

Geoffrey Dean retired as director of the Medico-Social Research Board in 1985. In 2003, he was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to medicine.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Sir Richard Doll	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
1 The Seed and the Soil	1	(6)
2 School	7	(8)
3 Medical School	15	(14)
4 Bomber Command	29	(14)
5 Peace	43	(8)
6 South Africa	51	(10)
7 Practice and Lauries Bay	61	(15)
8 Porphyria's Lover	76	(14)
9 The Curse of the Pharaohs	90	(7)
10 Lung Cancer	97	(7)
11 The Turkish Epidemic of Porphyria	104	(5)
12 Smoke	109	(11)
13 Porphyria: The Master Family Tree	120	(7)
14 King George III and the Royal Malady	127	(6)
15 Multiple Sclerosis	133	(7)
16 Arrested!	140	(11)
17 Ireland	151	(8)
18 The Medico-Social Research Board	159	(15)
19 Notebook and Shoe Leather Epidemiology	174	(14)
20 Alcohol, Heroin and AIDS	188	(7)
21 China	195	(9)
22 Retirement and a Shotgun Marriage	204	(6)
23 Cyprus, Turkey and Spain	210	(12)
24 Inshallah - God Willing	222	(7)
25 My Family and Personal Life	229	(10)
26 A Heart Attack: What Does It All Mean?	239	(8)
27 The End of the Story	247	(10)
Index	257