Benjamin Philip Watson

Benjamin Philip Watson FRCSEd, FRCOG, FACS (4 January 1880 7 August 1976) was a Scottish obstetrician and gynaecologist who was the head of academic departments in three countries. He was professor and departmental head successively in Canada, Scotland and the United States. In each of these posts he made undergraduate teaching a priority and reformed training in the speciality.

Early life and training He was born in Anstruther, Scotland on 4 January 1880, the son of David Watson and his wife Elizabeth Clark Watson (née Philp) and was baptised at Anstruther Easter Church on 5 March 1880. He attended the local school Waid Academy and then entered the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. In 1902 he graduated MB ChB with first class honours and the award of the Ettles and Buchanan Scholarships as top student in his year.

Three years later he graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medicine (MD) and was awarded a gold medal for his thesis on amniotic fluid and changes in the placenta following foetal death. In the same year he passed the examinations to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (FRCSEd). One of his examiners was Joseph Bell, the Edinburgh surgeon whom Arthur Conan Doyle (who had been Bell's assistant), used as the model for Sherlock Holmes. Later that year, he was appointed University of Edinburgh tutor in Diseases of Women, a post which he held until 1912. For the last two years of this appointment, he was a lecturer at the extramural School of Medicine of the Royal Colleges of Edinburgh. During this time he wrote Gynaecological Pathology and Diagnosis in collaboration with Alexander H. Freeland Barbour, one of the earliest English-language textbooks devoted exclusively to this subject.

Career In 1912 Watson accepted an invitation to become Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the University of Toronto, Canada and Director of both of these departments in the Toronto General Hospital – the first time they had been united under one chief. Here he established Toronto's first dedicated postgraduate program in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and is credited with modernising the residency system at Toronto General Hospital. and became frustrated with resistance to his proposals. Four years later he resigned.

His department became known for its academic training, such that nine of his pupils and assistants went on to occupy university chairs in Great Britain, in Canada and the United States. In 1948 he was elected to President of the New York Academy of Medicine. The University of Edinburgh in 1951 awarded him the Honorary Doctorate of Laws (LLD). They had two children. He died at his home in Danbury, Connecticut on 7 August 1976.