| >> Geoffrey Dowling and the Dowling Club
Geoffrey Dowling and the Dowling Club
Everywhere the Dowling Club goes, people say “what is the Dowling Club and who was Dowling?” Although others knew him better than I did and joined the Dowling Club earlier, I have been asked by our President to give you a brief account.
Geoffrey Dowling was born in Capetown in 1891 where his father was organist of St. George’s Cathedral. He was sent to school in England in 1903. He started his medical education at Guy’s Hospital in 1911 but he volunteered for the army in 1916 and served as a trouper in King Edward’s Horse Regiment. Demobilised in 1919, he returned to Guy’s and qualified with honours and a distinction in medicine in 1920. He passed the MRCP in the same year and proceeded MD a year later.
After house jobs at Guy’s he worked as a demonstrator in pathology, medical registrar and part-time assistant in the Venereology Department before becoming a consultant at St. John’s Hospital for Diseases of the Skin in 1926 and chief assistant to Dr. Barber at Guy’s. He was appointed Consultant Dermatologist to St. Thomas’s Hospital in 1932.
At St. Thomas’s at first he was the only dermatologist but was joined by Dr. Hugh Wallace in 1946. Dowling was slow in his clinics but a good listener. There were long silences. He was diffident and not a showman. He was a poor undergraduate teacher and an indifferent lecturer. He tended to mumble. However, he was a mine of information if the right questions were asked.
His main interests were lupus vulgaris and its treatment with calciferol and dermatomyositis.
He appeared to be out of sympathy with doctors not trained within his own orbit. In 1961 he wrote “I don’t understand what is in the minds of the physician-dermatologists of the North (of England). They go on plugging their clinches as though preaching a new doctrine”. This was directed mainly at Prof. Ingram, of Leeds. Ingram was almost certainly a better clinician than Dowling and had his own admirers throughout the county.
Dowling became Director of the Institute of Dermatology at St. John’s Hospital in 1951 at the age of 60. After retirement in 1956 he continued to work in various locum appointments in Brighton, Lewisham and Farnham until he was 83. He attended the Registrar cases session at St. John’s (the Saturday Morning meetings) almost up to the time of his death.
Although often tactless and aloof, he loved parties, but required lifts as he was a bad driver. He was usually the first to arrive and the last to leave. He played golf to a handicap of 12 and loved music and visiting art galleries.
He married Mary Elizabeth Kelly (May) in 1923. She died in 1965. They had 4 children. He died from carcinoma of the colon on 1 June 1976 aged 84. He made his peace with the North of England and visited Leeds with the Dowling Club in 1972 at the age of 81. I found him charming and cultured.
Hugh Wallace summed him up – and I cannot do better – “His clarity of thought and critical faculty, particularly in questioning long held dermatological shibboleths, was equaled by his inestimable enthusiasm and his perennial youth”.
The Dowling Club
After the second World War there were many supernumerary ex-service registrars and the group around Dowling included Arthur Rook, George Wells Douglas Sweet, Darrell Wilkinson, Wolf Tillman, Ian Whimster, Paul Naylor and others. Dowling insisted that all his staff had the Membership. Darrell Wilkinson referred to him as “the Headmaster”.
The club originally started as a journal club in the surgical outpatients of St. Thomas’s Hospital in October 1946. Soon the club was meeting each month, the meetings being preceded by a dinner. Dowling maintained that those who eat together and travel together get to know each other and work together. In the spring of 1947 meetings moved to the George Inn at Southwark on the South side of the Thames. The George Inn is now owned by the National Trust but it was well established in the time of Henry the Eight, that is early in the 16th Century, and was visited by Charles Dickens and Winston Churchill. The club became known as the George Club. At first the discussion was held after the tables had been cleared in the ordinary dining room but later an upstairs room became available. Initially the club was open to all trainee Dermatologists based in London. The atmosphere was informal and relaxed. A president and a secretary were ostensibly elected, but in reality were chosen by the President in agreement with Dr Dowling. No-one retired or resigned after obtaining a Consultant post and gradually peripheral and overseas dermatologists were invited to become members. Nowadays all those entering Dermatology are encouraged to join and may remain members to, or beyond, retirement. There is a marvelous friendly amalgam of ages with benefit to all.
At the present time an informal dinner, usually with a short paper or quiz, is held each month after the clinical meeting at the Royal Society of Medicine. The George Inn is too small for the numbers and various venues such as the Reform Club or Atheneum are used. The Club was renamed the Dowling Club after its founder. Usually there are also two weekend meetings in various parts of the country at one of which the Dowling Oration – another legacy – is given and patients are seen and discussed.
Early on it was considered that there should be visits overseas and the first visit was to Paris in 1948. Visits have been made nearly every year since then not only to many countries in Europe but also to Lebanon, South Africa, Iran, Canada, the United States of America, India, Jordan, Thailand, Kenya, Sri Lanka, South America, China, Malta and Syria. In the earlier years the group was accompanied by Dr Dowling who particularly was delighted to take the Club to South Africa, the country of his birth. Everywhere the Club has been made most welcome and lasting bonds have been made. A Dowling Club reunion is held each year at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology. Young dermatologists are able to apply for a Geoffrey Dowling Fellowship to study or do research abroad for up to 2 years.
You will thus see that the Dowling Club has a wide range of educational activities. Always, however, these are associated with time and opportunity for fellowship. As well as being pleasurable, many collaborative studies start in this way. In my experience, the Dowling Club is unique in Britain and probably throughout the world. Other specialties envy us. For this we thank its founder who was active in his support until his death. It is his memorial.
Acknowledgement
Much of this information is derived from Professor Charles Calnan’s biography of Dr. Dowling which I recommend you to read as it gives an interesting account of English Dermatology in the twentieth century.
Neville Rowell
June 2007
|
