Obituary: Bryan Harle Gandevia


Bryan Gandevia, respiratory physician and medical historian, died on 7 September 2006 at Wentworth Falls, in his beloved Blue Mountains. He was born on 5 April 1925 in Melbourne, the son of Dr. Eric Gandevia, an anesthetist, and Vera Brooking Gandevia, a nurse. Educated at Melbourne Church of England Grammar School and the University of Melbourne, he graduated MBBS (Hons) in 1948. Having completed his residency year at Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) he enlisted in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, serving with the rank of Captain, later Major, in the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) in Japan, and as Regimental Medical Officer to the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment in Korea.	1
During the latter posting, the young medical officer was interviewed by an Australian journalist, and spoke about the freezing weather, and the lack of warm winter clothing. This provoked the headline "Australians freeze in Korea: Medico tells." The then prime minister Robert Menzies is alleged to have said "Sack that bloody medical officer." He survived this episode.	2
During his term with the BCOF in Japan he married fellow Melbourne medical graduate, Captain Dorothy Murphy, who was the first woman appointed to the medical corps to go to Japan with the BCOF. The wedding was a rushed affair as Bryan was sent to Korea. On returning to Melbourne, he remained in the Commonwealth Military Forces until mid-1998. Reappointed to RMH, from 1951–54, he had postgraduate appointments in pathology, clinical medicine, and clinical studies supervision. He obtained his MRACP and MD (Melb). His next move was to London where, from 1954-57, he had research fellowship appointments at the Brompton Hospital for Diseases of the Chest and at Hammersmith Postgraduate Medical School. He was also able to spend time in the Wellcome Institute on a grant from the Australian Medical Association. Back in Melbourne he spent the next five years in private practice as a consultant physician. He shared rooms with his friend and colleague, the obstetrician/gynaecologist and medical historian, Frank Forster, in Lonsdale Street.	3
Life changed for Bryan and his family in 1963 when he moved to Sydney to take up appointments as Associate Professor of Medicine, University of New South Wales (UNSW), and Chairman of the Department of Respiratory Medicine at Prince Henry/Prince of Wales Hospitals. He was part of a team which managed to turn a run-down infectious diseases hospital into a world class centre of excellence. He was elected FRACP in 1963. This was an exciting time, as the first undergraduate students were passing through the new medical school (established July 1960) at UNSW. He was also heavily involved in industrial health surveys. He retained these appointments until his retirement in 1985, when he set up a private practice in Randwick, which he continued for some years. Asbestosis-related disease was an important element in his career; he was involved in research and much medico-legal work.	4
Bryan was the third of four generations of doctors. His grandfather, Neville Bamanji Gandevia (1856–1930) came from Persia, studied in England (MRCS LRCP), arrived in Australia in 1889, and practised as a GP in country Victoria and in Melbourne. His father, Eric (1891–1958), was an anesthetist. His elder son, Simon, is professor of Medicine at UNSW, and is married to a pathologist. His younger son, Robin, did not follow the family medical tradition but ran a successful audio business, 'Dr. Hi Fi.'	5
Bryan published widely on clinical subjects (particularly respiratory medicine and occupational health) and on a variety of historical topics. His output was prodigious. Papers, book chapters, book reviews, poetry, and entries for the Australian Dictionary of Biography. One of his critical successes is Tears Often Shed: Child Health and Welfare in Australia From 1788 (1978). In Australia's Bicentenary year in 1988, he contributed to Australians: A Historical Library (vols 8 and 9, 1987), but his most significant work in this period was Bibliography of Australian Medicine and Health Services to 1950 (3 vols, 1988), a joint project of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and the Department of Health and Community Services. This is a catalogue of all Australian monographic publications in the field of medicine and health published from 1790–1950, to extend and expand Sir Edward Ford's classic Bibliography of Australian Medicine 1790–1900 (1976). He was chairman of the editorial board of this massive bibliography. In 1988 he was awarded the College Medal by the RACP. In 1956 he published An Annotated Bibliography of the History of Medicine in Australia, which, with the assistance of librarians Alison Holster and Sheila Simpson, was expanded into An Annotated Bibliography of the History of Medicine and Health in Australia (1984).	6
He was on the editorial board of journals including Health and History, and was for many years editor of the Australian Physiotherapy Journal. His influence on the development of medical history in Australia was profound. His interest in the subject began when he was a medical student, and his first paper was published in the student journal Speculum in 1947.	7
Of his two great national projects, only one came to fruition. The first was the establishment of a national institute for the history of medicine, comprising an academic unit, a library and a museum. It received support and approval from the director-general of Health, but failed to eventuate for financial reasons. This was a great disappointment, as Bryan had a talent for obtaining grants for various projects. The second was the founding of an Australian Society of the History of Medicine. Groups of interested people already existed in various states (e.g. the Medical History Society of Victoria); the British Medical Association (later Australian Medical Association) had a Section of the history of medicine. Papers on medical history appeared in various publications, including the Medical Journal of Australia and the journals of the Colleges, such as the RACP. Several ad hoc national conferences were held, but on 25 November 1986, at the Third National Conference on Medical History and Health in Australia, the Australian Society of the History of Medicine was established at last. Bryan was elected president. Unlike some of the older groups, with doctors-only membership, membership of the new society was open 'to all interested in the history of medicine.' Before the formalisation of the society, there was some antipathy between the medical historians (like Bryan) the doctors who aimed to be historians, and the academic historians who had moved from history into medical history. The society flourished, and in 2005 the name was changed to the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine, to embrace trans-Tasman colleagues. The New South Wales Society of the History of Medicine was founded in 1989, with Professor Randall Albury as the inaugural president. Bryan was one of the founders, and drafted its constitution.	8
Bryan's enthusiasm for books and libraries led to the improvement of the coverage of medical history in many libraries. Under a shared scheme, medical librarians agreed to buy new historical material on particular topics relevant to their institutions.	9
He was on the library committees of the AMA (Victoria) as well as being chairman of their museum of medical history, where Ann Tovell, his research assistant, compiled an archive� a detailed record (including photographs) of doctors and hospitals in Victoria�now housed in the Biomedical Library at the University of Melbourne. Later he became a member of the library committee of the AMA (NSW); of the Biomedical Library Committee of UNSW; and, from 1963, of the History of Medicine Library Committee of the RACP (and later, chairman 1983�1993). This library was under threat several times during his stewardship, and once after he retired, but fortunately it survives and flourishes. One of the institutions he served with great distinction was the Australian War Memorial, being a member of its Board of Trustees (later, Council) from 1967 to 1983. It was for his work at the Memorial that he was awarded the AM in 1985.	10
How can one sum up such a person? In Who's Who in Australia he listed his recreations as Australian history, books, and wine. He amassed not only an extensive library at his home in Mount Victoria, but also an extensive wine cellar. Most of his library, like that of his friend Sir Edward Ford, has found its way to the RACP library, where he trained librarians Alison Holster, Sheila Simpson (his research assistant for many years), and myself, to appreciate medical history and its literature. He travelled widely to clinical and history meetings, such as the meetings of the International Society of the History of Medicine, and maintained a huge correspondence with his colleagues in both clinical medicine and history. His passing leaves a great gap in the list of medical historians. Frank Forster predeceased him, as did his colleague John Cobley, the historian of Sydney Cove.	11
He was a complicated person, who could be a most charming host at home or in his club, but he could also be sometimes unnecessarily critical of young people who were hoping to make a career in medical history, or people whose opinions he did not share. He was kind, caring, and witty. It was sad that he did not enjoy as many years as expected in the house he built at Mount Victoria, and moved into in 1985; that Dorothy died in 1994 after being hospitalised following a stroke; and that he was unable to be creative during his last years. It is ironic that he spent these later years in (a very modern) aged care facility built on the site of Bodington Hospital, formerly a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients.	12
BRENDA HEAGNEY History of Medicine Librarian, The Royal Austrliasian College of Physicians, 1985–2003.	13
Sources: RACP Archives; Simon Gandevia, Who's Who in Australia, The Medical Directory of Australia; The Australian War Memorial website, http://www.awm.gov.au; The Australian, 25 June 1990, 9.	14

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