John Fraser

Sir John Fraser, 1st Baronet, (23 March 1885 – 1 December 1947) was Regius Professor of Clinical Surgery at Edinburgh University from 1925 to 1944 and served as principal of the University of Edinburgh from 1944 to 1947.

His study of tuberculosis in children was to disprove the view of the Nobel prize winner Robert Koch that bovine tuberculosis did not play a major pathogenic role in human disease. The subsequent legislation led to the elimination of tuberculosis from milk supplies and resulted in a decline in incidence of bone and joint tuberculosis in children. In 1940 he was the first surgeon in Britain to ligate an uninfected patent ductus arteriosus.

Early life and family Fraser, whose parents both came from families of farmers, was born 23 March 1885 in Tain, Ross-shire. He was a few months old when his father died and he was raised as an only child by his mother. He went on to attend Tain Royal Academy. He then studied medicine, gaining admission to the medical faculty at the University of Edinburgh in 1902, graduating MB ChB with honours in 1907, winning the Allan Fellowship in Clinical Medicine and the gold medal for Clinical Surgery.

Fraser's son, Sir James Fraser, also became a surgeon and president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. The dissertation was awarded the Lister Prize for surgery. This view was not supported by laboratory experiments commissioned by a British royal commission. Fraser disproved Koch's view by demonstrating that 60% of the bones and joints he examined had the bovine form of the causative organism, Mycobacterium bovis. He went on to demonstrate the organism in local milk supplies and called for widespread pasteurisation of milk with increased regulation. The subsequent legislation led to the elimination of tuberculosis from milk supplies and resulted in a decline in incidence of bone and joint tuberculosis in children.

First World War Pages from Surgery at a Casualty Clearing Station (1918), showing bullets and shrapnel, the drawings for which were mostly prepared by Mrs Fraser. Fraser was commissioned in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) in August 1914. and on shock and its treatment with gum saline and other intravenous infusions. His studies on blood pressure in shock resulted in his being invited to join the Medical Research Committee's small group on surgical shock whose other members included distinguished physiologists like E H Starling, W M Bayliss and the future Nobel laureates C S Sherrington and Henry Dale.

Fraser's wartime observations were a major contribution to this committee who were to pioneer the scientific basis of fluid replacement in surgical shock.

While an army surgeon, he was successful in stitching up a gunshot wound of a heart. Many of the illustrations were produced by Fraser's wife.

Post-war medical career

On his return to Edinburgh, he was appointed surgeon to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children and the Royal Infirmary. In 1924 he was appointed to the Regius Chair of Clinical Surgery in succession to Sir Harold Stiles. He was elected a member of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1928, his proposers being Arthur Logan Turner, Harold Stiles, Arthur Robinson, James Hartley Ashworth and Sir James Alfred Ewing. In 1935, he left London for Southampton and on to New York on board the RMS 'Aquitania' setting out on a world tour. He travelled overland to Los Angeles and crossed the Pacific to Honolulu, to Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia. During the journey he visited hospitals and delivered lectures. His journal of the trip is held by Edinburgh University's Heritage Collections. In 1938 he was elected a member of the Aesculapian Club.

He chaired the Advisory Committee on Blood Transfusion which set up blood banks in Scotland in 1939.

Fraser's surgical career encompassed paediatric, abdominal, cardiothoracic and breast surgery and he wrote extensively on all of these. two weeks after Oswald Tubbs had successfully ligated an infected ductus in London. Robert Gross had performed the first in Boston in 1938. Before retiring from surgery Fraser operated on 12 such cases. He was regarded as a major contributor of the golden age for Edinburgh surgery. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the American College of Surgeons in 1926.

He was Surgeon to the King in Scotland, and was created a Knight Commander of the Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1937.

Selected publications Tuberculosis of the bones and joints in children. London: A & C Black, 1914. Surgery at a Casualty Clearing Station (with Cuthbert Wallace). London: A & C Black, 1918. Surgery of Childhood. London: Arnold & Co, 1926.