My appointment as Senior Lecturer in Pathology of Infectious
Diseases in 1962 was the consequence of the appointment of Dr. Thomas
Anderson as the UK's first Professor of Infectious Diseases in 1953. At
that time he moved the University Department including its developing Virus
Laboratory from Knightswood Hospital to Ruchill Hospital which was
considered to be the largest Infectious Diseases hospital in Europe at that
time, having roughly 240 Infectious Disease beds and 155 Chest Medicine
beds. After the move, Glasgow's first Intensive Therapy Unit was
developed, consequent to a large outbreak of poliomyelitis in Denmark, with
many of the patients there requiring artificial respiration. Although
laboratory facilities had existed in Ruchill Hospital for many years,
Professor Anderson wished these to be developed. These included the need
for a pathology department, and this was established in 1954 by the late
Dr. George B S Roberts. In 1961 Dr. Roberts moved to another post, and I
was appointed to succeed him, with the result that I inherited a reasonably
well-developed pathology department. I remained with this department
until my retiral in 1990. During this time, I gained an outstanding
experience of many common and some less common infectious diseases.
Simultaneously, there was a world-wide development of Virology, with the
identification of many viruses which caused the common infectious diseases
and other viruses which became attached to illnesses not thought to have a
viral basis hitherto.
As time passed, the department developed fluorescent-antibody methods in
relation to some of these illnesses, later immunoperoxidase procedures, and
lastly electron microscopy procedures once the Regional Virus Laboratory,
as it was now called, obtained an electron microscope. Simultaneously I
was studying the literature in this extensive field, and these articles
were helping to fill gaps in my knowledge and experience. In the
mid-1970s, the department was upgraded, and once this was completed, I
realised that I was now sitting on a wealth of material which ought to be
brought together to form a book. This was started in a tentative fashion
with the help of my secretary and my willing technical staff.
Inevitably, the work had not reached completion when I retired. By 1993,
I was in a position to approach the University Printing Department, which
had amalgamated recently with its associated Department at the University
of Strathclyde. I consider myself to have been very fortunate in
obtaining its agreement to take on the project of printing the book.
