Physiology at King's College, Newcastle

Abstract

AT the end of the present academic year, Prof. David Burns retires from the chair of physiology in the Medical School at King's College, Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1921, when Burns succeeded Menzies, the Department of Physiology was small but with a long and honourable record. It was founded, with a lecturer in charge, in 1832 by a group of physicians and surgeons in Newcastle, and was the first department of physiology in England to be 90 designated. Sir Thomas Oliver was appointed first university professor of physiology in 1887. He was succeeded by Bainbridge in 1911. Burns inherited a department with only two assistant and the ‘bulge’ of students following the First World War. He leaves a large department, sumptuously housed, in the largest provincial medical school in England. Such changes take toll in the time and energies of academic staff. There was, too, a period of intense distraction in the ‘thirties when the relationship of the Newcastle Medical School, and of Armstrong College, to the University of Durham came under close scrutiny. These periods of Sturm und Drang militated undoubtedly against intense prosecution of research. Burns early realized that teaching would have to take precedence. Yet the list of publications from his Department during these twenty-eight years is by no means unimpressive. In his later years, he became actively interested in the problems of physical fitness, a natural focusing of his life-long interest in social conditions and in youth movements, especially the Boy Scouts. In 1943, Newcastle honoured him by making him a justice of the peace. In this office Burns found once again an outlet for his interest in social welfare. It can truthfully be said that Burns is handing over to his successor a department in good heart, a solid foundation for a flourishing school of physiology.