The hall of fame reviewed - luminaries of geriatric medicine

It is a sad fact that so many early BGS colleagues have passed on. Many qualified during the war, served in the Armed Forces, had to retrain for civilian practice and then face extremely fierce competition for consultant posts. In this article by Michael Denham, he reviews some of the lives of geriatric medicine’s luminaries including a few ‘foreigners’ who fled the hostility in their homelands to make stellar contributions to the fledgling specialty of geriatric medicine.Drs Hugo Droller, Oscar Olbrich, and Leo Wollner escaped from the Nazis while Vladimir Korenchevsky, who fled from revolutionary Russia, and became the father of gerontology.  

Hugo Droller

Dr Hugo Droller (1909-1995) was born in Munich,  qualified from Munich University in 1933 and escaped from Germany almost immediately afterwards. He requalified with the Conjoint Examination in 1935. He completed various appointments in the Sheffield area until the outbreak of war when he was interned in the Isle of Man, was soon released and continued to work in Sheffield. After the war, he acquired British nationality and joined the RAMC, serving first as a medical specialist and rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel in command of a medical division in Egypt and Kenya. On return to the UK, he worked with Hobson and Pemberton on their studies of the elderly in Sheffield. This introduced him to geriatric medicine and in 1950 he was appointed to St. James Hospital, Leeds with responsibility for 1,300 patients and a waiting list of 600. Gradually he turned the department into a modern geriatric unit with much improved staffing. 

He was modest, approachable, with a delightful sense of humour and the capacity to put everyone at ease. He was a fine linguist and read medical literature in many languages. It amused him to park his ageing Ford alongside the gleaming Jaguars and Rovers of the part time consultants with big private practices. 

Further reading: Obituary, Munk’s Roll website.

Oscar Olbrich

Dr Oscar Olbrich, (1901-1957), was a Czech of Jewish background born in Prague. He graduated in Vienna in 1926, worked in Vienna and Prague, gaining his MD degree (Prague) in 1931. He fled Nazi Europe but left his departure for Edinburgh rather late, arriving only 5 days before the outbreak of Second World War.  

He requalified at the University in 1941, passing the MRCP exam the following year. He completed various posts in Edinburgh followed by a period in general practice before returning to hospital medicine as physician in charge of Queensberry House Hospital, a unit for the aged sick. Here, aided by MRC grant, he investigated renal function and blood changes in older patients. In 1947, Olbrich was awarded a PhD (Edinburgh).  

In 1950, he became physician in charge of the 600-bedded geriatric unit at Sunderland General Hospital. The building was an old poor law institution where inpatients stayed an average of six years. He modernised the clinical management of the older patients, establishing the unit as a leading geriatric centre of excellence. Admissions increased to 3,000 a year, an outpatient department was opened and a local ‘meals on wheels’ service established.  

He set up a gerontological research unit concentrating on ageing changes in the blood, kidneys, heart, and prostate. He presented papers at all the meetings of the International Association of Gerontology (IAG) where his extensive knowledge of European languages made him a considerable asset.  The IAG elected him as honorary secretary of the clinical gerontological research committee and asked him to organise an international meeting in Sunderland for 1958, which in the event was organised by his colleague Dr Lyn Woodford-Williams.

Dr Olbrich was short, round faced, usually smiling, full of boundless energy and enthusiasm, coupled with a glorious sense of humour and a charming manner. He was a forceful, persuasive character and was known as ‘Ossie, or as ‘the funny foreigner with the atrocious accent’.  He read avidly, and was an outstanding gifted teacher. However, he could be an autocrat and a tyrant in the mould of the continental professor. He was devoted to Lyn, his colleague, but abused her unmercifully and in public.  He always called her ‘Villiams’ never by her Christian name. ‘Villiams, you fool’ spoken in a Teutonic accent, was heard more than once in the wards.  

Further reading: Obituaries in the Times, BMJ, Lancet, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Leopold Wollner

Dr Leopold Wollner (1924-2005) - his story is somewhat different. In 1938, Leo and his sister escaped from the Nazi occupation of Vienna and arrived in England, where his parents later joined them. He graduated from Guy’s hospital in 1951, where he won several prizes. His initial posts were in Oxford, which included an attachment at Cowley Road Hospital, an old workhouse/ infirmary, where Lionel Cosin had recently been appointed. Further training appointments were in Sunderland and Newcastle, followed by appointment as consultant at Stoke Mandeville Hospital from 1960 to 1963 and finally as consultant physician in geriatric medicine in Oxford where he stayed until he retired in 1989. 

He thought that his unit trained more future geriatricians than any other. He strongly believed that the way forward for the speciality was integration with general medicine, which did not find favour with all his physician colleagues.  

Further reading: Munk’s Roll web site.

Vladimir Korenchevsky

Vladimir Korenchevsky (1880-1959) was not a member of the BGS but his credentials and training under a pantheon of eminent research workers merits a mention. He trained as a clinician in the Tzarist Medical Academy at Petrograd, served as head of a military laboratory during the Russo-Japanese war, before working as an postgraduate under Metchnikoff and Pavlov. By 1915, he was Professor of Experimental Pathology at the University of Petrograd but emigrated to Britain when he considered his life to be in danger following his removal from his Chair by the Soviet government in 1920. He researched at the Lister Institute for Preventative Medicine in London until he retired in 1945. In 1939, he founded the British Club for Research on Aging and focussed on “the causes and processes of ageing by clinical or other observations on human beings or related experimental studies on animals”. He was a prolific author and founded the Nuffield Unit for Gerontological Research in Oxford where he worked until 1953. 

Further reading: Obituary BMJ, 15th August 1959

George Adams

Professor George Adams (1916-2012), graduated in 1938 from Queen’s University, Belfast, joined the RNVR at the time of Munich and served on a merchant aircraft carrier escorting Atlantic convoys. While he was a medical registrar in Hammersmith Hospital, London, he visited Marjory Warren with whom he established a longstanding friendship. On his return to Belfast, he reviewed 400 older sick and disabled patients in the chronic sick wards of Belfast City Hospital. In 1949, he was appointed consultant geriatrician at the Hospital where the majority of patients had been inpatients for more than one year. He developed a vibrant stroke rehabilitation/geriatric unit at Wakehurst House. His social and medical surveys of older people in Northern Ireland revealed considerable deprivation.  

He enjoyed teaching, published extensively and advised the governments of Malta and the Isle of Man on development of geriatric services. He was appointed Professor of Geriatric Medicine at Queens University in 1971, elected President of the BGS in 1973, the year he was appointed CBE.  

Further reading:  Professor R Stout, In memoriam, Professor George Adams 1914-2012.  BGS newsletter, June 2012  

John Agate

Dr John Agate (1919-1998), qualified from Trinity Hall, Cambridge and the London Hospital in 1942, was senior registrar to the famous Dr Donald Hunter, became research physician in the MRC industrial diseases unit, publishing many papers and completing his MD. A short service commission in the RAF followed. He then decided on a career in geriatric medicine, having remembered his earlier work with older people. In 1953, he was appointed consultant in Bradford with sole responsibility for 730 beds in seven hospitals. In 1958, he was ‘head hunted’ for the new consultant geriatrics post in Ipswich, where he had responsibility for 530 beds with a catchment area of 1000 square miles! All but a handful of beds were in outlying hospitals: three of which were large 18th century ex-workhouses. Gradually he reduced the waiting time for admission from 53 to 2 days.  

He was treasurer and chairman of the BGS executive committee and in 1965, organised the Royal College of Physicians of London first two-day seminar on old age. John negotiated with Karger to publish Gerontologia Clinica in 1959 and later negotiated with Baillière Tindall to publish Age and Ageing. He was a prolific writer, contributed to television documentaries and edited Modern Geriatrics for several years. He and his wife sang together with the London Bach Choir, enjoyed their proximity to Aldeburgh and gave splendid parties to which amateur and professional musicians, such as George Malcolm, were invited.  He loved driving cars and took part in a rally in which he and his co-driver beat Stirling Moss.  

Further reading: Agate, John Norman 1919-1998, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Lord Amulree

Lord Amulree, (1900-1983), long serving and outstanding president of the BGS, must be well known to BGS members but for those who do not, try reading: Lord Amulree (1900-1983): the Indefatigable Advocate of Older Persons, Journal of Medical Biography, 2006, 14, 236-242. 

Professor Sir Ferguson Anderson

A great deal has been written about ‘Fergie’.  He was an outstanding charismatic advocate of geriatric medicine, which he encapsulated with the words; ‘Illness in old people is interesting, commonly remediable, and treatment is thus very worthwhile.  What’s more, the elderly remain among the most grateful patients it is possible to have’. His wonderful mellifluous voice can be heard on the British Library National Sound Archive, Geriatrics as a medical specialty, F3300. Those who want to learn more, might like to start with Sir William Ferguson Anderson (1914-2001), BGS Newsletter June 2013 43, 34-36.  

Charles Andrews

Dr Charles Andrews (1903-1990) qualified from Queens University, Belfast in 1930 and was appointed consultant physician at the Royal Cornwall Infirmary, Truro in 1938. In 1947, the county Medical Officer of Health asked him to examine and report on the facilities available for the chronic sick in seven former Cornish workhouses. As part of his ‘education’ he visited Marjory Warren, coming away ‘with a clear idea of what was required in his survey.’ He examined the 454 patients in the sick wards and was very critical of accommodation and medical care.  

His recommendations for change included creating a geriatric unit, the closure of one institution, building two residential homes and moving demented/mentally defective patients, mothers and children to appropriate accommodation. The new service was based at Barncoose hospital in Redruth where Dr Tom Wilson was appointed as consultant geriatrician. The British Medical Association delayed the publication of the advertisement for the consultant because the word ‘geriatrician’ was new to them. By 1951, the new geriatric service admitted three times as many as were admitted to the same number of beds in 1948. Charles Andrews was an early member of the MSCE  (the original name for the British Geriatrics Society) and a vice President. 

Further reading: As we were before the NHS: Rural Cornwall and Dr. C. T. Andrews, BGS Newsletter October 2013, 45, 34-36      

Michael Denham
Past President of the BGS and currently  historian and archivist