Douglas Gairdner

Douglas Montagu Temple Gairdner FRCP (19 November 1910 – 10 May 1992) was a Scottish paediatrician, research scientist, academic and author. Gairdner was principally known for a number of research studies in neonatology at a time when that subject was being developed as perhaps the most rewarding application of basic physiology to patient care, and later his most important contributions as editor, firstly editing Recent Advances in Paediatrics, and then of Archives of Disease in Childhood for 15 years, turning the latter into an international journal of repute with its exemplary standards of content and presentation.

Early life

Gairdner, the son of William Henry Temple Gairdner, an Anglican missionary, and grandson of Sir William Tennant Gairdner, KCB, a medical doctor and professor, was born in Scotland on 19 November 1910. His mother was Mary Mitchell. He was the great-nephew of historian James Gairdner. Gairdner was named for his father's late friend, Douglas M. Thornton who had died three years before Gairdner's birth. Gairdner had four siblings. His very early life was spent in Egypt where his father was a missionary. Gairdner's father died in 1928, when Gairdner was 17 years of age.

Gairdner attended Kelvinside Academy, Glasgow Dragon School, Oxford; and Gresham's School, Holt.

Professional career

Gairdner worked as a fellow in paediatrics at Bellevue Hospital in 1939.

Gairdner's 1949 article, The Fate of the Foreskin: A Study of Circumcision, was described as "a model of perceptive and pungent writing." Gairdner was pleased with the success of the article. and suggested more conservative ways of treating repeated respiratory infections.

Gairdner served as editor of Recent Advances in Paediatrics, an annual book publication, for several years from 1954. nephrotic syndrome, circumcision, and the formation of red blood cells in infancy. He made contributions to the field of neonatology with studies on improving the management of respiratory problems of the newborn. PubMed lists sixty-one published papers by Dr Gairdner.

Honours

The James Spence Medal of the British Paediatric Association was awarded to Gairdner in 1976. of the British Medical Association in 1978 for his creative editing of the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Personal life

Gairdner lived in a detached house on Rutherford Road in Cambridge. Gairdner and his wife, Nancy, had four girls. The youngest was killed in a road accident. He also was a sailor and kept a boat named the "Merry Thought".

Gairdner loved to read and told of his wide-ranging interests in an article published by the British Medical Journal.

He was described as a man with a strong sense of social responsibility who took politics seriously and a radical by temperament who "found it difficult to combine his feel for tradition with the need for change."

Death

Gairdner died on 10 May 1992 at the age of 81. He was survived by his wife, Nancy, three daughters, and five grandchildren.