| Main Menu | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| Obituary: Dr Beryl Corner |
|
|
|
|
Obituary; Dr Beryl Corner OBE, JP, MD, FRCP,MD Hon (Bristol), FRCPCH (Hon) Born 1910, died 4th March 2007 Dr Beryl Corner was one of those pioneers of newborn care and medical research who made a lasting difference to paediatrics. She was also a help and guide to many doctors making their way in a career, that in her own time, was often unsympathetic towards women. She qualified at the Royal Free Hospital and acquired both the membership of the Royal College of Physicians and her MD the following year. This was a formidable achievement that should have opened the way to a career as a physician, but those posts were usually reserved for men though a career with children was thought suitable for a woman. At 26 she was appointed to an honorary position with outpatients at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Sick Children. This was effectively the first proper paediatric appointment in the West of England. She went on to found the first Special Care Baby Unit in the country at Southmead Hospital Bristol and personally performed the first exchange transfusion to prevent the crippling brain disease kernicteris caused by rhesus haemolytic disease of the newborn. She was amongst the first to pioneer tube feeding for immature babies, then the greatest single step forward in preventing the devastating effects of hypoglycaemia, the main cause of spastic paresis, epilepsy and mental retardation arising from the neonatal period. She also worked on oxygen monitoring to prevent blindness, another scourge of the immature babies. During the war she started a flying squad, collecting babies and ferrying them to her unit often in person and in the midst of the bombing. It is not generally known, but Beryl stationed herself on the roof of her house in Clifton as an Air Raid Warden spotting and dealing with incendiary bombs. The subsequent list of her professional achievements are legion . She was one of the three women in at the beginning the British Paediatric Association, the forerunner of the present Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health which went on to make her an honorary fellow. Her large book Prematurily, became a classic , especially in India which she frequently visited and she often had Indian doctors on her staff in Bristol. She was a founder member of the Neonatal Society and was an advisor to the World Health Organisation and the British Council. Her wider interests included the violin and a deep affection for Bristol zoo. Her close nursing colleague, Miss Luffman objecting to the use of an incubator at Southmead Hospital for a newborn chimpanzee, but her work on milk substitutes for primates was called on more than once. Amongst her non medical interests was an abiding affection for the magistracy, though she regretted not being on the youth bench. This might have been for the best as she did not suffer fools kindly! She could be formidable when irate but had an essential “can do”, outlook that was very necessary when making her way in a male dominated medical profession. Many parents had reason to be grateful for this. Years later one mother recalled that Beryl had told her to keep speaking to her son dying of tuberculous meningitis as “he knows you are there”. Sometimes though her juniors would have to smooth ruffled parental feelings, after sharp and entirely justified remarks which lesser mortals would have eschewed. At a time when few were willing to devote themselves to the care of immature babies because the outcome was often so disappointing, she was one of that tiny number of paediatricians who proved that a bad prognosis was neither inevitable nor even probable. Nowadays, there is an excellent chance that a baby born three months early is likely to grow up healthy. This would have astounded Beryl’s critics. There was another side of her life which few of her colleagues knew about. She was deeply Christian and pro life. She was a strong opponent of destructive embryo research at the time of the Warnock Report which preceded the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act, and was prescient of the disrespect for early human life that would follow from it. For three decades she was an advisor to “Doctors who Respect Human Life”, an international organisation founded on the continent after the medical atrocities of the Second World War, and she helped the anti euthanasia charity ALERT. This she did until a week before the stroke which killed her. She was greatly relieved when the BMA , after flirting with euthanasia, abandoned their neutral stance and came out strongly against it. Beryl lived alone but was a constant source of medical advice to friends and neighbours. “You never really retire in medicine”, she said on turning 90. She was invariably kind to those who sought her help. She was a doer, not one for standing aside. Dr Beryl Corner was one of that small number of British medical pioneers who, by dint of ability and commitment, achieved much for generations of babies born early. Dr Anthony Cole Beryl’s SHO Southmead Hospital 1969 - 70 |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|