Why I became an occupational physician ...
I left school at 16 intending to pursue an interest in bacteriology and obtained a post at a hospital laboratory. Fortunately for me, I met the Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Birmingham who advised that the best route forward would be to study medicine. I applied to the Medical School and was offered a place for 1 year later, providing I obtained a Higher School Certificate. The usual 2 years of study had to be crammed into just one, but I made it and got into the Second Year!After qualification, house jobs and 2 years National Service in the RAMC, laboratory medicine had lost its appeal. During a short spell in General Practice, I explored other career options and decided Industrial Medicine, as it was then called, was the area for me. This decision was undoubtedly influenced by my upbringing in the Black Country where I lived just 200 m from a drop-forging factory. Among my earliest recollections were exciting visits to the iron foundry where my father was manager. School and later holidays were spent in gas works and I still have a Ministry of Labour and National Service permit enabling me to work as a Gas Company Laboratory Assistant!
I do not recollect any advertised posts in Industrial Medicine so I wrote to many organizations seeking an opening. Responses came from several companies including the Austin Motor Company where Donald Stewart was Chief Medical Officer. He was one of the founders of the Society of Industrial Medical Officers, which later became The Society of Occupational Medicine. Thus, a lifetime in occupational medicine commenced at Longbridge in 1953 in a well-established medical department.
I immediately felt at home in the environment in which I found myself—a large integrated vehicle manufacturing plant, employing at its peak >25 000 workpeople. A wide range of working environments presented many hazards; there was also a large rehabilitation workshop established during World War Two jointly with the Birmingham Accident Hospital, as well as a factory in South Wales where ex-miners disabled by pneumoconiosis, made small metal components and the Austin Model Pedal Car.
Once in post, an attempt at the MRCP convinced me that success was impossible outside hospital. Nevertheless, further study was encouraged and I obtained a DIH. Research opportunities abounded and an MD followed after a 5-year study of impaired working capacity in middle aged men. Other opportunities to gain wider experience included part-time responsibilities in Electricity Generating Stations as well as ‘devilling’ in medico-legal cases—even providing information about industrial processes for Donald Hunter who stayed with Donald Stewart when he was in Birmingham. The splendid training and experience I received proved invaluable on moving in 1967 to Lucas Industries as Chief Medical Officer.
I have been fortunate to have a professional life full of variety and interest, at home and abroad, and I have never, for one moment, regretted the decision made more than half a century ago.
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