Frederick Miller

Frederick John William Miller (born 5 November 1911 in Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, Northumberland, died 30 March 1996) was a British paediatrician, who made critically important contributions in describing tuberculosis in childhood, including the definition of the treatment and control, of the disease. Along with Sir James Spence and Sir Donald Court, Fred Miller were responsible for the formulation of the major epidemiological cohort study called the Newcastle Thousand Families Study. After that the group was called the Newcastle Trio in the medical community.

Life Frederick Miller was the son of a dentist, and undertook his early schooling at The King Edward VI School, Morpeth, where he excelled as both a sportsman and scholar. Miller started his medical training at Durham University Medical school, now the Newcastle University Medical School, where he first encountered and was heavily influenced by Sir James Spence Miller took the post of maternal and child health officer at the Maternity unit, under the supervision of Sir John Charles, who was the Medical Officer for Health for Newcastle. conducted research into the causes of infant mortality and morbidity, either at home or at hospital within the population of Newcastle. Both the prewar work and the work in the first years after the war, showed how infection was related to the emergence of the relation between the impact of disease and social deprivation, and this led in May 1947, to the trio, led by Spence, starting the Thousand Families Study cohort study in Newcastle. John Forfar described it best, in presentation of the James Spence Medal in 1987 thus:

In 1948, when the National Health Service was created, Miller was appointed as a consultant to the Royal Victoria Infirmary and Newcastle General Hospital, a position he held until 1974, when he retired. In 1955, Miller was recognised for his work into childhood poverty and disease in the north east of England, but being appointed Reader in Social Paediatrics at the University of Durham, an appointment that remains unique to this day. In 1966, while working as a Consultant for the World Health Organisation (WHO), Miller was asked to spend nine months in India to research and report on the teaching of Child Health in that country. Miller would eventually travel to India every year until 1984, to continue the development of the project and measure ongoing progress in Child Health.

Contributions One of Miller's main contributions, was the study of Tuberculosis. When Miller started his paediatric career in 1934, tuberculosis was a major scourge of the childhood, particularly in the poor in the north of England. A child in Newcastle, indeed anywhere in the UK, who was diagnosed with TB faced a grim outlook. Millers working life covered a period of dramatic success, including discoveries, like the use of Streptomycin and changes to nutrition and general improvements to the health of the populace at large. Miller's achievements in this area were not inconsiderable, and by 1963, TB in children in Newcastle had become a rarity. Miller's research was written into a book that became the standard text on tuberculosis, described below. In the 1980s, with the re-emergence of the disease, the book was updated by Sir John Crofton and Norman Horne.

Awards and honours Douglas was awarded the prestigious James Spence Medal in 1987, by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.