GEORGE THOMAS BEATSON, KCB, KBE, MD, DL

Mary Davidson

    Sir George Beatson, pioneer surgeon, is a major figure in the history of Scottish medicine. He was a great doctor, a great Scotsman - and a great Campbeltonian. How many people in present-day Campbeltown know of his achievements, of his contribution to medical science, or his reputation in Victorian Scotland and beyond? This is his story.

    Henry Dundas Beatson, Captain of HM Cruiser Swift, that dashing legendary figure in the history of the maritime life of Kintyre, was the father of five remarkable sons. One was a minister of the Church of Scotland, two were eminent surgeons, one was a soldier of renown, and another a senior civil servant. Eldest of these was Surgeon-General George Stewart Beatson, Honorary Physician to Queen Victoria, who served with distinction in Ceylon, India and the Crimean War, in which he was an ally of Florence Nightingale in her campaign for better medical administration.

    In 1848, while he was on a tour of duty in Ceylon, his son George Thomas was born in Trincomalee. On their return to Scotland, the family went to Campbeltown, where they owned a house - Woodside - on the Kilkerran side of the Loch. George Thomas Beatson’s mother was Mary Jane Cochrane, who had Isle of Man connections, and her sons were educated at King William’s College there. George Thomas went from there, first to Clare College, Cambridge, and then to Edinburgh University Medical School, where he graduated MB, CM in 1874. He was awarded the Lord Lister Medal for Clinical Surgery in 1872.

    Soon after his graduation George had the experience which was to determine the course of his life. While living with an invalid, whose care he had undertaken, and who was a West of Scotland laird, he took the opportunity to work on his MD thesis, the initial topic of which, lactation, was suggested to him by the weaning of lambs on the adjoining sheep farm. Although he subsequently changed his topic to the brain, submitting a thesis entitled ‘The function of the cerebri cortex with investigations’, the non-nervous connection between the ovaries and the breast was an interest which remained with him for a quarter of a century. It was his careful observation of natural phenomena and ability to make important deductions therefrom that marked him out as an innovative doctor, even a revolutionary.

    When he qualified MD in 1878 he became house surgeon to Lord Lister, Professor of Clinical Surgery in the University of Edinburgh, and ‘father of antiseptic surgery’. This was another experience which

affected the young doctor profoundly. He became an ardent disciple of Lister and his methods, and this had a great influence on his career.

    One of George Thomas Beatson’s patients during his time as house surgeon at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary was W E Henley, the poet and friend of R L Stevenson. Henley described his young doctor in verse:

‘Exceeding tall, but built so well his height
Half-disappears in flow of chest and limb’
Moustache and whisker trooper-like in trim;

Frank-faced, frank-eyed, frank-hearted, always bright;
And always punctual - morning, noon and night;

Bland as a Jesuit, sober as a hymn;

Humorous, and yet without a touch of whim;
Gentle and amiable, yet full of fight.

    In 1893 George Beatson was appointed consulting surgeon to the Glasgow Cancer Hospital, and from then on he was dedicated to the search for better methods of diagnosis and treatment of cancer, especially in women. In 1896 he published in The Lancet his famous paper, ‘The Treatment of Inoperable Cases of Carcinoma of the Mamma: Suggestions for a New Method of Treatment with Illustrative Cases’. His earlier studies on the effect of ovarian function on lactation had ‘pointed to one organ holding control over the secretion of another and separate organ’. Observing also that ‘the changes that take place in the mammary gland in the process of lactation are almost identical, up to a certain point, with what takes place in a cancerous mamma’, he became the first surgeon ever to remove the ovaries from women with inoperable breast cancer. His paper recounted the case histories of three such operations which he had performed in 1895. His patients were not cured, but the marked improvement in local lesions which he reported in the 1896 Lancet article encouraged others to follow up his work, and this eventually led to the modern use of endocrine therapy in breast cancer.*

    It was always Beatson’s firm conviction that biochemistry was the key to the problem of cancer, and research had been a primary purpose of the Hospital, but it was not until 1906 that plans were made. These came to fruition in 1912 with the opening of the new hospital and its research department. The ceremony was a grand affair presided over by HRH Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, possibly because of Beatson’s family connections with Inveraray.

    This was a high point in the history of the Cancer Hospital, but still it was George Beatson’s other activities which won for him so many honours. During his lifetime he was famed for his Territorial Army work, for founding the Scottish branch of the Red Cross, and for the leading part he played in the provision of an effective ambulance service for Scotland, through the newly-formed St Andrew’s Ambulance Association. Gazetted CB in 1902, he was knighted in 1907. In recognition of his First World War work with the RAMC and Red Cross he was enrolled as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1918, and he also received the French Cross of the Legion of Honour. His name is perpetuated in the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Bearsden, and the Beatson Oncology Centre in the Western Infirmary. A portrait of him in his youth as Lister’s assistant hangs in the Beatson Institute.

    There is an historic link between Beatson and Dr Elsie Inglis, the heroic ‘Saint of Serbia’. Having been rejected in 1914 by the War Office, where she was told to ‘go home and sit still’, she went to see Sir George as head of the Scottish Red Cross, and offered her services as doctor and also a 100-bed unit, staffed entirely by women, to serve at home or abroad. Answerable as he was to the War Office, Sir George had to decline this noble proposal. He was, however, sympathetic, having suffered similar reverses himself in his pioneering youth. To encourage her he said: ‘There is no knowing what they may do before the end of the War.’ Prophetic words indeed....

    The Glasgow Herald of the day described Sir George Beatson as ‘a man with a pronounced personality. Of commanding presence and indomitable will, he was imbued with chivalry and courtesy. He had no patience with anything mean, and he never would suffer fools gladly. But, with an ailing fellow-being, no mother could be more tender’. In 1928 Dr Peacock was appointed Director of the Research Department of the Glasgow Cancer Hospital, forerunner of the Beatson Institute. After the interview which preceded his appointment, he recorded his impressions of Sir George Beatson, whom he described as ‘a venerable Victorian gentleman’. He says:  ‘I had a memorable lesson in excellent manners and courtesy from Sir George Beatson who drove me in his horse-drawn carriage right up cobbled Hill Street to the Hospital at the top of the hill there. When we went in he was treated with great ceremonial. He told me that he always insisted that the windows were to be closed when he arrived at the Hospital. He also objected to the spectacle of maids working, so none were ever visible when he was at the Hospital.’

    Though at his death in 1930 his cremated remains were buried in his mother’s Isle of Man grave, he always regarded Campbeltown, where his cousins lived, as the family home.

    * I acknowledge with warmest thanks the explanation of the scientific  basis and implications for medical research of Sir George’s famous Lancet article of 1896 kindly given by Professor J A Wyke, MA, Vet  MB, Ph D, FRCVS, FRSE, F Med Sci, of the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research.

No 49,  Spring 2001