Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Patrick Christopher Steptoe, C. B. E., 9 June 1913 - 22 March 1988

1996; Royal Society; Volume: 42; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1098/rsbm.1996.0027

1748-8494

Robert Edwards,

Medical History and Innovations

Patrick Steptoe was born on 9 June 1913 in Witney, Oxfordshire. He grew up in a family of eight brothers and sisters, the sixth boy and the seventh child of Grace Maud (née Mimms) and Harry Arthur Steptoe. His mother was an advocate of women’s rights, and worked for the Mothers’ Union and Infant Welfare clinics; she died in 1973. His father was Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Witney; he died in 1953. As a schoolboy at the Witney Grammar School, Patrick became interested in medicine and music, and the two subjects demanded virtually equal time during his late teens. This musical talent manifested early and lasted throughout his life, for even at the age of 13 he played incidental piano music during matinees for the silent films of Tom Mix, Harold Lloyd, Ramon Navarro and Rudolph Valentino. Later he was organist in St Mary’s Church, and director and organist of Christ Church Musical Society, Oxford, when he was 18 years old. He wrote that the heavy weight of the organ keys helped to make his hands and fingers very strong. These early signs of a character full of determination and initiative were apparent later in his life, as he coped with disappointments and opposition during his medical career. He might indeed have become a musician, but medicine finally triumphed when at age 20 he entered King’s College, London, as a medical student. He qualified in 1939 at the age of 26 with the degrees of M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. from St George’s Hospital in London. This hospital retained his affection throughout his life, even though he remembered wards full of cases of pneumonia, meningitis and septicaemia since antibiotics had not then been discovered.