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Obituary

WILLIAM WILSON WOODSM.R.C.S.

Dr. W. W. Woods, formerly assistant director ofthe Pathological Institute at the London Hospital,died on March 10 at the age of 87.

He joined the staff of the Pathological Institute as anassistant in 1911 and qualified with the Conjoint diplomain 1913. He became assistant director of the institute in1920. In 1934 he was appointed consultant pathologist(morbid histologist) to the Royal Navy, a post which heheld for 20 years.

D. H. writes:

" Dr. Woods spent his whole professional life as

second in command to Prof. H. M. Turnbull in the

department of morbid anatomy at the London Hospital.Turnbull’s teaching was sometimes laboured and difficultto follow, and this was where his devoted friend andassistant director, Dr. Woods, figured in the daily life ofthe Institute. With gentle tact and much kindness Woodsin all those years gave a helping hand to many a man whohad spent forty perplexing minutes with Turnbull. Arrivednext door to beg of Billie Woods an explanation of what thegreat man meant, one found a warm and sympatheticwelcome. The ambassadorial kindness was generouslygiven no matter whether the visitor were senior physicianor junior registrar. In these years Woods developed theeyes of a lynx, so sharp that no detail, however tiny, everescaped him in the post-mortem room. Meanwhile, thesurgical department, which looked after the biopsy work,grew bigger than the post-mortem department, and BillieWoods, who was in charge of it, became a world expert onthe histological diagnosis of biopsy specimens. Naturally,the great mass of these came from patients in the LondonHospital, but many specimens arrived from overseas andwere reported upon by post."

HARRY BOLTON TIPLERM.B.Cantab.

Dr. H. B. Tipler, a general practitioner in Aldershot,died on Feb. 22 at the age of 63.

He was born in Birmingham and educated at KingEdward’s School, Birmingham, and Christ’s College,Cambridge. He gained an open scholarship in physiology,pharmacy, and pathology to the London Hospital, qualify-in 1933. He served as ophthalmic house-surgeon and house-surgeon to the surgical isolation block at the London Hos-pital, and as house-physican to Addenbrooke’s Hospital,Cambridge. Following an assistantship in a practice inNorfolk, he joined his practice in Aldershot as a partnerin 1936.

He was called up into the R.A.M.C. in 1941 and wasattached to the lst Armoured Division, with which heserved on active service in the Middle East until 1943,when the regiment was disbanded. He was transferred tothe 82nd General Hospital at Benghazi, where he serveduntil he was demobilised in 1945. He returned to generalpractice in Aldershot, only giving up his work two daysbefore entering hospital with his final illness.

His hobbies were photography and painting, and hisabiding interest was in wild life, particularly birds (he wasa member of the Royal Society for Protection of Birds), andthe countryside.

P. J. M. W.

Notes and News

LINKED FELLOWSHIPS IN UNIVERSITIES

THE Wellcome Trust is to provide fellowships to

encourage cooperation between basic-science disciplinesand clinical medicine. Fellows will normally be appointedfor three years and will be members of basic-sciencedepartments. Support will depend on acceptance of ajoint research programme submitted by the clinician andthe head of the basic-science department. The maindifference from the present system will be that the futureof the fellow will be the responsibility of the head of thebasic-science department and not of the clinician withwhom the work is being carried out. The basic scientistwill thus remain on the academic ladder in his own subjectarea. It is anticipated that fellows will take universitypositions in the basic-science departments as they becomevacant. The Trust hopes that a research interest in clinicalproblems will continue in the appointee’s future career.

Details of the fellowships may be had from the director,Wellcome Trust, 52 Queen Anne Street, London W1M 9LA.

WORK-LOADS AND WAITING-TIMES

THE Department of Health and Social Security hasrevived its former practice of issuing preliminary reportson the annual Hospital In-patient Enquiry. The first

glimpse at the figures for 1969 1 provides a clear picture ofthe hospital work-load in the N.H.S., but the data onwaiting-times seem confusing. The report is based on asample of patients discharged from (or dying in) non-psychiatric hospitals in England and Wales. Total dis-charges came to 4,868,950, and the leading specific diagnosesincluded:

The total number of operations performed was 2,664,350,and the most common operation groups were:

Table 2 in the report gives mean waiting-times, andsuggests, at first sight, that patients with acute myocardialinfarction have to wait a week, on average, for a hospitalbed in the Leeds region, and that patients with fracture ofthe neck of femur may be kept waiting for a year or more inWales but no time at all in Oxford or Wessex. In fact thesefigures exclude all urgent admissions, and table 4 showsthe proportion of cases in a given diagnostic group which1. Department of Health and Social Security and Office of Population

Censuses and Surveys. Report on Hospital In-Patient Enquiry forthe year 1969: preliminary tables. H.M. Stationery Office. 42p.