Leonard Findlay

Leonard Findlay (5 February 1878, in Glasgow – 14 June 1947) was the paediatrician who was the first Leonard Gow Lecturer on the Medical Diseases of Infancy and Childhood. Findlay was also the first person to hold the Samson Gemmell Chair of Child Health at the University of Glasgow.

Findlay married Gertrude Findlay née Binning in 1905. The couple had two daughters.

When Findlay reported on the aetiology of rickets in 1908, he reached the following conclusion:

The confinement of children, which we find wherever rickets prevails, does, of course, deprive them of some fresh air and sunshine and thus reduce their restive power, but it is not entirely... on these grounds that it exerts a baneful influence. It is due to the want on exercise which invariably goes along with ... the confinement. We may surmise that lack of exercise fresh air... allows the generation of some harmful product, and so by autointoxication brings about the disease.

In the second decade of the 20th century Findlay again collaborated with his colleague Diarmid-Noel Paton to study Tetany. Findlay and Paton isolated a Guanidine compound.