George Newman (physician) explained

Honorific-Prefix:Sir
George Newman
Office:Chief Medical Officer for Her Majesty's Government
Term Start:1919
Term End:1935
Predecessor:Arthur Newsholme
Successor:Wilson Jameson
Birth Date:1870 10, df=y
Birth Place:Leominster, England
Death Place:The Retreat, York, England
Alma Mater:University of Cambridge

Sir George Newman (23 October 1870 – 26 May 1948) was an English public health physician, Quaker, the first Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry of Health in England, and wrote a seminal treatise on the social problems causing infant mortality.

Biography

George Newman was born in Leominster, Herefordshire, the fourth of six children of Henry Stanley Newman and Mary Anna Pumphrey. His father was a Quaker who undertook several missionary journeys, including one to India, and edited The Friend, a Quaker journal. Newman was educated at two Quaker schools, Sidcot School in North Somerset (1881–1885) and Bootham School[1] [2] in York (1885–1887). He initially planned to become a missionary, but then decided to study medicine, starting at the University of Edinburgh Medical School and continuing at King's College London. After qualifying he studied for his MD at Edinburgh, receiving the gold medal for his year, before winning a scholarship to study public health and gaining his Diploma in Public Health in 1895 from the University of Cambridge.

He became a demonstrator in bacteriology and lecturer in infectious diseases at King's.[3] In 1900 he became Medical Officer to the Borough of Finsbury in inner London and the rural county of Bedfordshire. His experiences in these posts led him to publish Infant Mortality: a Social Problem in 1906. This has remained a medical classic, pointing out the unchanged infant mortality rate over the preceding fifty years, and identifying the causes and areas potentially open to intervention. He was Gresham Professor of Physic. In 1907 he was appointed by Sir Robert Morant, Permanent Secretary to the Board of Education, as Chief Medical Officer to the Board, and in 1919 he was also appointed Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry of Health. The annual reports he wrote for both these posts were widely acclaimed as important and influential.[4]

In the 1930's he was joint treasurer of the General Medical Council with Sir Herbert Lightfoot Eason.

Family

In August 1898 he married Adelaide Constance Thorp (d.1946), who was an artist. They had no children. They lived at Harrow Weald after he retired in 1935. He died in 1948 at The Retreat, York.

Quaker

Born into a Quaker family, he remained a committed Christian throughout his life. From 1899, for some forty years, he was the (anonymous) editor of the Friends' Quarterly Examiner, a Quaker journal. In autumn 1914 he was involved in the establishment of the Friends' Ambulance Unit, which provided medical care for soldiers and civilians in the war zone, and following the introduction of conscription in 1916 he helped to negotiate exemptions for Quakers already serving with the FAU.

Education

In 1923 Newman was invited to address the centenary celebrations of his old school, Bootham. He referred to Alcuin, an eighth century educator and deacon whose three guiding principles were: holy living and holy learning; teaching understanding rather than repetition; and, finally, that education should be 'wisely and liberally furnished'.[5] Newman believed that Quaker schools such as Bootham embodied these principles. He maintained an interest in medical education, and in 1923 he wrote Recent Advances in Medical Education.

Public health

His initial contribution, Infant Mortality: a Social Problem, was the forerunner of many writings about public health which proved respected and influential, including: Hygiene and Public Health in 1917, Outline of the Practice of Preventative Medicine in 1919, The Rise of Preventative Medicine in 1932, and The Building of the Nation’s Health in 1939. His annual reports as the Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry of Health were eagerly awaited each year, and were widely regarded as authoritative monographs on a variety of aspects of this field.

Professional honours

Publications

Further reading

Notes and References

  1. Book: Bootham School Register. York, England. Bootham Old Scholars Association. 2011.
  2. 10.1093/ref:odnb/35215. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2004.
  3. 15846025. 2005. Dunn. P. M.. Sir George Newman, MD (1870-1948) and the prevention of perinatal disease. Archives of Disease in Childhood: Fetal and Neonatal Edition. 90. 3. F278–80. 10.1136/adc.2004.061184. 1721876.
  4. 18014245. 1935. Sir George Newman. American Journal of Public Health and the Nation's Health. 25. 6. 754–5. 1558992 . 10.2105/ajph.25.6.754.
  5. 10.1136/adc.85.5.440. 11668116. York, Alcuin, and Sir George Newman. Archives of Disease in Childhood. 85. 5. 440–1. 2001. Walker-Smith . J. . 1718985.
  6. 10.1017/S0020268100010271. mini-review of Halley Stewart Lectures, 1930. Health and Social Evolution by Sir George Newman, published by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1931. Journal of the Institute of Actuaries . 62 . 2 . 353 .
  7. News: mini-review of A Century of Medicine at Padua by Sir George Newman. The Spectator. 23. 13 May 1922.
  8. Newman, George (1907) Infant mortality: a social problem. New York, E.P. Dutton and Co.
  9. 10.1136/bmj.2.3005.113. Medical Education in England: A Note on Sir George Newman's Memorandum to the President of the Board of Education . 1918 . Allbutt . T. C. . Clifford Allbutt . BMJ . 2 . 3005 . 113–115 . 20769126 . 2341591 .
  10. 10.1192/bjp.69.286.407. Sir George Newman's Memorandum on Recent Advances in Medical Education in England (extract). Journal of Mental Science . 1923 . 69 . 286 . 407–408 . p. 408

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "George Newman (physician)".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.