Professor Eldred Walls

Physician and anatomist

Born: 17 August, 1912, in Glasgow.

Died: 24 March, 2008, in Edinburgh, aged 95.

BORN in Glasgow in 1912, the fourth of five children, Eldred Walls attended Hillhead High School, rapidly displaying a remarkable intellect. His father served in the First World War, was gassed at Passchendaele, and died in 1925, leaving Eldred an orphan, his mother having died earlier in the same year. Financial pressures on the family forced him to leave school at 15 and matriculate in Glasgow University aged 16.

Initially, he planned to study medicine, but when it was pointed out that he would be only 20 on qualification and therefore unregisterable, he started a BSc course in botany, subsequently doing both courses simultaneously. He qualified in medicine in 1934 with first-class honours and the Struthers Gold Medal.

In the first summer after obtaining his MB, he ran a general practice in Argyllshire before commencing his first residency appointment as house surgeon to Professor "Pop" Burton at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. The financial constraints that had plagued the family prevented him from following a surgical career and it was to anatomy he turned. He had enjoyed the intellectual challenge of the subject and received strong support from Duncan Blair, head of the department in Glasgow, to make it his chosen profession.

It was in the dissecting room that, when an undergraduate, he first met Vivien Robb, whom he subsequently courted and married in 1939.

Throughout his schooldays and at university, Eldred was an enthusiastic and proficient athlete and rugby player. The highlights of his rugby career were to be a member of the championship winning Hillhead High School FPs team in 1934, "one of the most consistently hard working forwards in the West of Scotland", and to have been a trialist for Scotland, regrettably uncapped because he was not heavy enough.

Appointed as lecturer in anatomy in Glasgow in 1935, he was soon seen to be an inspirational teacher, firm and fair, and possessed of a wonderful sense of humour. Promotion to senior lecturer took him to Cardiff in 1941, where he had command of the University Naval Reserve, and where he studied hypnotism, on one occasion putting members of the London Symphony Orchestra into a trance and having them behave bizarrely on stage. He felt uncomfortable with the subject and never again put on any form of public display.

Further promotion took him to the Middlesex Hospital Medical School as reader and two years later he obtained the SA Courtauld Chair of Anatomy at the same institution. He was appointed Dean of the Medical School in 1967, serving for seven years, during which time he personally raised millions of pounds which allowed the establishment of the Jules Thorn Institute and other facilities at the Middlesex.

Research on the structure and function of the anal sphincter led to his appointment as Honorary Anatomist to St Mark's Hospital, an association he enjoyed up until his death. He also strongly supported physiotherapy and was president of the Society of Physiotherapy for several years. Closer to his heart though were the blind physiotherapists, now correctly "the Association of Visually Impaired Chartered Physiotherapists", who refused any suggestion that he should resign as their president, and whose annual meeting he always attended.

A strong supporter of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland since 1936, he served as treasurer from 1955 to 1963 and was president from 1963-65.

Retirement from the Middlesex in 1974 was very brief. He rapidly tired of looking out of his cottage window in the village of Ancrum in the Scottish Borders at "wet sheep" and started a new career in Edinburgh working in the department of his old friend George Romanes, doing what he liked best: teaching. He also worked in the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, making dissections and conducting tutorials on the Primary Fellowship courses. He was still giving anatomy tutorials to surgeons in his 94th year. Both the Edinburgh and English Colleges of Surgeons awarded him their Fellowships for all that he did for them.

Throughout his life Eldred enjoyed travelling. He examined in many of the external colleges of London University in such countries as Sudan, Nigeria and Jamaica, he was an advisor to WHO, visiting Addis Ababa and Kampala, and as an ambassador for the Middlesex toured Australasia. He was visiting professor in Toronto, Haifa, Loma Linda and Kansas City. As a result he had a worldwide network of friends with whom he communicated regularly, delighting in the old-fashioned art of letter writing.

His love of teaching led to his development as an orator. Meticulous preparation, rehearsal, and a phenomenal memory allowed him to deliver an hour-long address without any script or note, all the time holding his audience spellbound.

Eldred Walls is survived by his son, Andrew, his daughter, Gwyneth, six grandchildren and five great grandchildren. Vivien died in 1999, shortly after their diamond wedding anniversary.