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John Tyrer, CBE, MD, FRCP (Lond. & Edin.), FRACP (1920–2006)

2006; Elsevier BV; Volume: 13; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.jocn.2006.06.001

1532-2653

Mervyn J. Eadie,

Medical History and Innovations

The death in Brisbane of Emeritus Professor John Tyrer on 6 June 2006 has taken from Australian neurology a very significant figure from a now almost bygone generation, one who, for the span of a dozen years, served the Australian Association of Neurologists as Editor of the annual volumes of its Proceedings and also those of Clinical and Experimental Neurology, the successor to the Proceedings.John Howard William Tyrer was born in Sydney in 1920. He was educated there and graduated in medicine from the University of Sydney in 1941 after a distinguished undergraduate career. During the latter years of the Second World War he served in the Royal Australian Air Force in a special research unit. After demobilisation he trained as a physician at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, while occupying University teaching positions in pathology and medicine in preparation for taking the Membership of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He carried out experimental studies on the cardiovascular dynamics of the artificially perfused sheep that resulted in the award of a Doctorate of Medicine from his alma mater in 1953. By that time he had been appointed Honorary Assistant Physician to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. With his early appointment to a consultant position at the University of Sydney’s major teaching hospital he seemed well under way on the career path of a consultant physician in Sydney. However, when applications were called for the first full-time Chair of Medicine at the University of Queensland, where the previous Professors of Medicine, Sir Alexander Murphy and Sir Ellis Murphy, had been half-time appointees, John Tyrer became an applicant. Late in 1953 he was appointed to the vacant Chair.Before taking up his position in Brisbane in late 1954 John spent a year abroad as the Travelling Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He visited various academic medical units in the UK and US, but spent the majority of the year at the London Hospital where his interests seemed to shift from cardiovascular disorders to clinical neurology. At the London Hospital he was attached to the service of the then Sir Russell Brain, later Lord Brain FRS, Physician to the Hospital and to the Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases, sole author of the major neurology textbook of the day, and President of the Royal College of Physicians of London.John arrived in Brisbane to find himself facing the task of building a modern research-based Department of Medicine at the Royal Brisbane Hospital (then the Brisbane General Hospital), an institution whose recent traditions had been almost wholly clinical. He set about this task systematically, supported by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland, J.D. Story and his successor Sir Fred Schonell. He began to recruit research-oriented academic clinicians, initially from outside Queensland (Alfred Steinbeck, Martyn Lloyd, John Sutherland and Michael Parfitt) until, beginning with Bryan Emmerson and Lawrie Powell, the first Queenslanders he had trained began to find positions in his Department. His personal research, and the research of his colleagues, proliferated. Sections of his Department were opened at the other Brisbane teaching hospitals (Princess Alexandra Hospital, Mater Hospital, Greenslopes Repatriation Hospital). By the time of his retirement in 1985, some 31 years after his appointment to his Chair, his Department of Medicine was one of the largest, most productive and most financially secure at the University of Queensland, containing three chairs at Royal Brisbane Hospital (Tyrer himself, Powell and Eadie) and chairs at Princess Alexandra Hospital (Emmerson) and at the Repatriation General Hospital (Richard Gordon).Although John’s main interest lay in neurology, his understanding of the range of his academic responsibilities at the University of Queensland prevented him from committing himself exclusively to that specialty and he continued to see himself in the Sydney mold of a physician with a major neurological interest rather than as a dedicated pure neurologist. Accordingly, he remained an Associate rather than an Ordinary Member of the Australian Association of Neurologists for many years. Nevertheless, when the founding editor, E. Graeme Robertson, resigned the editorship of the Proceedings of the Australian Association of Neurologists after occupying the position for 11 years, John Tyrer willingly accepting the role of his successor and continued in it until his own retirement 12 years later. At the Royal Brisbane Hospital he held appointments as Senior Physician and Senior Neurologist. His extremely careful, cautious temperament, relentlessly logical approach, desire and respect for exact knowledge and exact use of language, as well as an occasional slowness to appreciate intuitively the way the average man thinks, probably made him a little uncomfortable in the hurried cut-and-thrust of ordinary clinical neurological practice. As the years passed he slowly reduced his clinical involvement but continued in collaborative research in neurohistochemistry and clinical neuropharmacology and expended considerable effort in facilitating the research of others and in advancing the affairs of the Department for which he was responsible. Up to the time of his retirement he continued to teach clinical medicine to his students, who greatly appreciated the clarity and logic of his presentation of material and the quality of the written notes he made available.At the date of his retirement John Tyrer had edited The Treatment of Epilepsy and co-authored eight books, two of them very much of his own conception (The Astute Physician and the Queensland University Aphasia and Language Test). He had also been author or joint-author of over 100 papers in the scientific literature. His main personal neurological research initiatives lay in the oxidative enzyme histochemistry of the brain and in an attempt to quantitate the degree and progression of aphasic speech disturbance by relating it to the pattern of development of speech at different ages in childhood. After his retirement in 1985 he did a little clinical work with children who had speech defects, worked part-time in teaching pathology to medical students, but mainly devoted himself to the intellectual and cultural interests which were always so important to him. Over much of the earlier period of his retirement he was also engaged in collecting the material that came to form the basis of his lavishly illustrated 455-page The History of the Brisbane Hospital, published in 1993 at the invitation of the Board of the Hospital.From an Australian neurological perspective John’s greatest contributions probably were his editorship of the Australian Association of Neurologists’ journals and his making possible, and contributing to, almost all of the neurological research that occurred in Queensland during the 31 years in which he occupied the University of Queensland’s Mayne Chair of Medicine.Early in his career in Brisbane John developed strong Francophile interests. As far as possible he tried to arrange annual visits to Paris over each end-of-year vacation period, and triennial hemi-sabbatical half-years at the Salpêtrière in Paris, where he had valued friendships with French neurologists such as Raymond Garcin and Francois Lhermitte, and also the Dutchman George Bruyn. His main intellectual interest lay in language, in general, rather than in any particular language, though he said he was always happy when, during his visits to France, he began to dream in French rather than in English. He was widely read in classical literature, and well versed in history and philosophy, and had interests in a number of cultural and artistic activities. He thought with great clarity, formed his views and plans carefully and then worked dedicatedly toward bringing them to fruition without allowing himself to be deviated from his purposes, unless he saw that the deviation would be to his advantage. He was extremely loyal to his colleagues, went out of his way to support them and manifested considerable skill in relentlessly manipulating University and Hospital mechanisms to achieve his ends, and the ends of his colleagues. He fought hard, and bravely, against illness over the last few years of his life, supported by his second wife Patricia to whom, together with their son Philip and the children of his first marriage, the Australian neurological community would offer its sympathy in the loss of a great servant both to Queensland medicine and to Australian neurology. The death in Brisbane of Emeritus Professor John Tyrer on 6 June 2006 has taken from Australian neurology a very significant figure from a now almost bygone generation, one who, for the span of a dozen years, served the Australian Association of Neurologists as Editor of the annual volumes of its Proceedings and also those of Clinical and Experimental Neurology, the successor to the Proceedings. John Howard William Tyrer was born in Sydney in 1920. He was educated there and graduated in medicine from the University of Sydney in 1941 after a distinguished undergraduate career. During the latter years of the Second World War he served in the Royal Australian Air Force in a special research unit. After demobilisation he trained as a physician at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, while occupying University teaching positions in pathology and medicine in preparation for taking the Membership of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He carried out experimental studies on the cardiovascular dynamics of the artificially perfused sheep that resulted in the award of a Doctorate of Medicine from his alma mater in 1953. By that time he had been appointed Honorary Assistant Physician to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. With his early appointment to a consultant position at the University of Sydney’s major teaching hospital he seemed well under way on the career path of a consultant physician in Sydney. However, when applications were called for the first full-time Chair of Medicine at the University of Queensland, where the previous Professors of Medicine, Sir Alexander Murphy and Sir Ellis Murphy, had been half-time appointees, John Tyrer became an applicant. Late in 1953 he was appointed to the vacant Chair. Before taking up his position in Brisbane in late 1954 John spent a year abroad as the Travelling Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He visited various academic medical units in the UK and US, but spent the majority of the year at the London Hospital where his interests seemed to shift from cardiovascular disorders to clinical neurology. At the London Hospital he was attached to the service of the then Sir Russell Brain, later Lord Brain FRS, Physician to the Hospital and to the Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases, sole author of the major neurology textbook of the day, and President of the Royal College of Physicians of London. John arrived in Brisbane to find himself facing the task of building a modern research-based Department of Medicine at the Royal Brisbane Hospital (then the Brisbane General Hospital), an institution whose recent traditions had been almost wholly clinical. He set about this task systematically, supported by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland, J.D. Story and his successor Sir Fred Schonell. He began to recruit research-oriented academic clinicians, initially from outside Queensland (Alfred Steinbeck, Martyn Lloyd, John Sutherland and Michael Parfitt) until, beginning with Bryan Emmerson and Lawrie Powell, the first Queenslanders he had trained began to find positions in his Department. His personal research, and the research of his colleagues, proliferated. Sections of his Department were opened at the other Brisbane teaching hospitals (Princess Alexandra Hospital, Mater Hospital, Greenslopes Repatriation Hospital). By the time of his retirement in 1985, some 31 years after his appointment to his Chair, his Department of Medicine was one of the largest, most productive and most financially secure at the University of Queensland, containing three chairs at Royal Brisbane Hospital (Tyrer himself, Powell and Eadie) and chairs at Princess Alexandra Hospital (Emmerson) and at the Repatriation General Hospital (Richard Gordon). Although John’s main interest lay in neurology, his understanding of the range of his academic responsibilities at the University of Queensland prevented him from committing himself exclusively to that specialty and he continued to see himself in the Sydney mold of a physician with a major neurological interest rather than as a dedicated pure neurologist. Accordingly, he remained an Associate rather than an Ordinary Member of the Australian Association of Neurologists for many years. Nevertheless, when the founding editor, E. Graeme Robertson, resigned the editorship of the Proceedings of the Australian Association of Neurologists after occupying the position for 11 years, John Tyrer willingly accepting the role of his successor and continued in it until his own retirement 12 years later. At the Royal Brisbane Hospital he held appointments as Senior Physician and Senior Neurologist. His extremely careful, cautious temperament, relentlessly logical approach, desire and respect for exact knowledge and exact use of language, as well as an occasional slowness to appreciate intuitively the way the average man thinks, probably made him a little uncomfortable in the hurried cut-and-thrust of ordinary clinical neurological practice. As the years passed he slowly reduced his clinical involvement but continued in collaborative research in neurohistochemistry and clinical neuropharmacology and expended considerable effort in facilitating the research of others and in advancing the affairs of the Department for which he was responsible. Up to the time of his retirement he continued to teach clinical medicine to his students, who greatly appreciated the clarity and logic of his presentation of material and the quality of the written notes he made available. At the date of his retirement John Tyrer had edited The Treatment of Epilepsy and co-authored eight books, two of them very much of his own conception (The Astute Physician and the Queensland University Aphasia and Language Test). He had also been author or joint-author of over 100 papers in the scientific literature. His main personal neurological research initiatives lay in the oxidative enzyme histochemistry of the brain and in an attempt to quantitate the degree and progression of aphasic speech disturbance by relating it to the pattern of development of speech at different ages in childhood. After his retirement in 1985 he did a little clinical work with children who had speech defects, worked part-time in teaching pathology to medical students, but mainly devoted himself to the intellectual and cultural interests which were always so important to him. Over much of the earlier period of his retirement he was also engaged in collecting the material that came to form the basis of his lavishly illustrated 455-page The History of the Brisbane Hospital, published in 1993 at the invitation of the Board of the Hospital. From an Australian neurological perspective John’s greatest contributions probably were his editorship of the Australian Association of Neurologists’ journals and his making possible, and contributing to, almost all of the neurological research that occurred in Queensland during the 31 years in which he occupied the University of Queensland’s Mayne Chair of Medicine. Early in his career in Brisbane John developed strong Francophile interests. As far as possible he tried to arrange annual visits to Paris over each end-of-year vacation period, and triennial hemi-sabbatical half-years at the Salpêtrière in Paris, where he had valued friendships with French neurologists such as Raymond Garcin and Francois Lhermitte, and also the Dutchman George Bruyn. His main intellectual interest lay in language, in general, rather than in any particular language, though he said he was always happy when, during his visits to France, he began to dream in French rather than in English. He was widely read in classical literature, and well versed in history and philosophy, and had interests in a number of cultural and artistic activities. He thought with great clarity, formed his views and plans carefully and then worked dedicatedly toward bringing them to fruition without allowing himself to be deviated from his purposes, unless he saw that the deviation would be to his advantage. He was extremely loyal to his colleagues, went out of his way to support them and manifested considerable skill in relentlessly manipulating University and Hospital mechanisms to achieve his ends, and the ends of his colleagues. He fought hard, and bravely, against illness over the last few years of his life, supported by his second wife Patricia to whom, together with their son Philip and the children of his first marriage, the Australian neurological community would offer its sympathy in the loss of a great servant both to Queensland medicine and to Australian neurology.