Obituary for Lovell Robert ‘Tommy’ Thomsett; 4 June 1921–7 November 2011

Abstract

I first met Tommy Thomsett in 1986 as an undergraduate veterinary student at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC), London, when he delivered our ectoparasitology lectures. Little did I know back then how much this gentle, learned man would influence my life, because he stimulated my interest in his subject which ultimately led to my career as a clinical dermatologist. Lovell Robert Thomsett, named after both of his grandfathers, was known to many of us in the UK as one of the ‘Grandfathers’ of veterinary dermatology. On a European scale however, it may be more appropriate to entitle him the ‘Great Grandfather’, because in the 1970s, he was probably the sole academic in the whole of Europe working full-time in the field of veterinary dermatology. The road to that lofty role was a slightly convoluted one; his first career choice as a young man was apparently to become an organist, but fortunately for us he did not pursue that idea. He entered the RVC in September 1939, but with the outbreak of the Second World War, he volunteered to join the Royal Navy and served in North America during the winter of 1941. He was persuaded that he could better serve King and Country as a veterinary surgeon however, so he returned to the UK to resume his studies in 1942. The Military’s loss was our profession’s gain! He married Edith in 1947 and qualified a few months later, taking up a job in mixed practice in Winslow, Buckinghamshire. His sons, Philip and Andrew, were born in 1949 and 1952 respectively, and in 1958, he decided on a career change, taking a post as lecturer in veterinary medicine at the RVC. He was initially based in the Beaumont Animal Hospital and then at the Hawkshead Campus when it became functional in 1959, where he was promoted to Senior Lecturer. Tragically, Edith passed away in 1971 and in 1973 Tommy took a sabbatical in Northern Nigeria to teach veterinary medicine. He met his second wife, Eileen, in the mid-1970s and they married in 1977. Their daughter, Alexandra, was born in 1980 and she, following in her father’s footsteps, trained as a veterinary surgeon, qualifying from the RVC in 2003. Tommy was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 1975 and was a founding member of the British Veterinary Dermatology Study Group in 1976. In 1978, he was the first to describe cowpox in the domestic cat in a report in the Veterinary Record. In 1979 the Wellcome Trust awarded him a grant to establish a Dermatology Unit in the RVC Department of Medicine with David Lloyd. Tommy retired from the RVC in 1986 and became a founding RCVS diplomate in veterinary dermatology in 1987. He remained very actively involved in the profession however as author, examiner, consultant and mentor and he was a major contributor to the book, “Practical Equine Dermatology”, published in 2003 and now translated into several languages. Tommy died, aged 90, after a short illness, on 7 November 2011. As one of a sadly dwindling breed of ‘old school’ academics who have a vast breadth and depth of useful, practical, clinical knowledge of both farm and domestic veterinary species, Tommy was a rare treasure. Some of his photographs are still used in dermatology courses today, and in establishing one of the most structured and comprehensive undergraduate and postgraduate veterinary dermatology training programmes in the world, his professional legacy is that hundreds of students, residents and postgraduates have, and will, continue to benefit from his wisdom. He will be missed.