Celebrating Public Health Lives: John Stuart Horner 1932–2002

Abstract

Friends remembering John, after his sudden passing, spoke not so much of his contribution to medicine in Wales or to the public health, as of his gentleness and self-effacing modesty. His eminence in the profession and his unfashionable virtues together gave him a moral standing unique among his contemporaries. John Francis Skone was born in Milford Haven and educated at Haverfordwest Grammar School, Pembrokeshire. In 1942, he began the adventurous life of a wartime medical student in the East End when he entered the (Royal) London Hospital. He qualified MBBS (London), with distinction in pathology in 1948. After house appointments at his teaching hospital, he did National Service in the Royal Air Force Medical Branch, for most of the time as station medical officer at RAF St. Athan, near Cardiff. For the last few months he was also an Honorary Clinical Assistant in Paediatrics, proceeding on demobilisation to a full-time post in the newly established Professorial Unit in Child Health at the Welsh National School of Medicine. He obtained the DCH in 1952. The options open to able young doctors in the early 1950s were limited. Senior posts in the recently established National Health Service were filled with relatively young men and women. The expansion of the consultant grade, and the General Practice Charter were some years in the future. John was awarded an Elliston Scholarship to study public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. To meet the costs not covered by this award, he worked part-time in general practice. There he came under the influence of James Mackintosh, a doctor and a lawyer, who was the Professor of Public Health. Macintosh was the leading authority on housing and health, and had an attractive, unpedantic approach to public health law. To his clinical interests, John now added an abiding fascination with environmental health, particularly the public health aspects of law and of housing. He gained the Diploma in Public Health (London) with distinction, the Diploma in Industrial Health and was awarded the Hecht Prize in 1952. In the same year, he was one of the last candidates to sit successfully for the MD in State Medicine by examination; London University discontinued the qualification shortly afterwards. He was appointed an Assistant Medical Officer of Health (MOH) in the City of Oxford, followed by rapid promotion to be deputy MOH. His chief, John Warin, unusually, was also the consultant in infectious diseases to the United Oxford Hospitals and medical superintendent of the infectious diseases hospital. (A former editor of this journal, John Kershaw, similarly combined being both MOH of Colchester with a consultancy in infectious diseases). Dr Warin was also a university lecturer in public health. John was drawn into these wider activities. He discovered his talent for teaching, and his growing interest in environmental health was encouraged by the clinical experience of infectious diseases and of their control in the community. In 1955, John followed Stanley Walton GM as MOH and Chief Welfare officer, West Bromwich, when Walton succeeded Mackintosh in the London Chair. Two years later he became the County Medical Officer to the Isle of Wight. He then took what seemed at the time a step backwards. He returned in 1959 to being a deputy MOH, but in a department that was one of the most progressive in the UK, and where his talents and interests were more fully engaged. Robert Wofinden, an outstanding public health physician of his generation, was MOH of the city and Port of Bristol and Professor of Public Health in the University. His expertise was often called for nationally and internationally; he valued a deputy to whom he could delegate with confidence. John was largely responsible for the day-to-day