Stanley Davidson

Sir Leybourne Stanley Patrick Davidson (3 March 1894 – 27 September 1981) was a British

Early life and career Davidson was born on 3 March 1894 in Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon), to Sir Leybourne Francis Watson Davidson and Jane Rosalind Dudgeon Davidson. In 1928, he was appointed as assistant physician to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. He then was appointed as Professor of Medicine at the University of Aberdeen in 1930, which was one of the first full-time Chairs of Medicine anywhere and the first in Scotland.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1932. His proposers were Arthur Logan Turner, James Ritchie, Thomas Jones Mackie and William Thomas Ritchie.

In 1938, he was given the Chair of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, in which he remained until he retired in 1959. He was elected to the Aesculapian Club in 1951. He was also the President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1953 to 1957, He played an important role in upgrading, modernising and broadening the hospital teaching facilities within Edinburgh area. Professor Ronald Haxton Girdwood who discovered the link between folate deficiency and Megaloblastic anemia, Sir John McMichael, a pioneer in the field of Cardiology whose works formed the basis of the treatment of cardiac diseases in Britain, and Harold Thomas Swan, who discovered and published two case-notes recording the successful clinical use of penicillin in 1930.

Research works Davidson was a member of the Empire Rheumatism Council, now known as Arthritis Research UK, and has made significant contributions to developments in the field of Rheumatology.

In 1959 Davidson wrote, with collaborators A.P Meiklejohn and R. Passmore, the book Human nutrition and Dietetics that dealt with nutrition and health. The book has remained a standard reference on nutrition since then.

He co-wrote The Textbook of Medical Treatment with Sir Derrick Dunlop.