Davis Evan Bedford

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Davis Evan Bedford
Born(1898-08-21)21 August 1898
British Heart Journal[1]

FRCP (1898–1978) was a British physician and cardiologist.[2]

Life

After education at

Ministry of Pensions. In 1925 he graduated MD. At the Orpington Hospital, he was influenced by John Parkinson and in 1925–1926 pursued postgraduate study in France.[2]

Parkinson directed Bedford's interest toward French cardiology, and the time he spent in the mid-1920s in Paris with Laubry and in Lyons with Gallavardin left him with an admiration for French attitudes to study and thinking which he passed on to several succeeding generations.[1]

Returning from France, Bedford in 1926 was appointed Paterson Research Scholar at the

British Heart Journal
from 1939 to 1947 when he resigned.

He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps throughout the second world war, during which he was appointed consulting physician to the Middle East Forces. Brigadier Bedford became known as an efficient if demanding officer among the medical divisions, from Aleppo on the Turkish frontier to the hospitals behind the Eighth Army in Cyprus, Malta, and Khartoum.[2]

During the war, he kept a detailed diary, chronicling notable events such as his treatment of Winston Churchill, who became ill while visiting Tunis.[4][5]

When WWII ended, D. Evan Bedford resumed his appointments at the Middlesex Hospital and the National Heart Hospital and established a large private practice in cardiology. In the post WWII era, cardiac catherisation and angiocardiography helped to revolutionise cardiac surgery. Evan Bedford and William Somerville worked closely with cardiac surgeons such as

Thomas Holmes Sellors and Russell Brock.[2]

Bedford was appointed in 1946 the

British Cardiac Society and was in 1963 appointed CBE. He was intimately familiar with the history of cardiology and often quoted from memory such sources as Rokitansky’s Die Defecte der Scheidewande des Herzens, Lower’s Tractatus de Corde, or the writings of the Irish Victorians, Adams, Stokes and Corrigan.[1]

He collected a private library of over 1000 books which he donated in 1971 to the Royal College of Physicians.[7] According to Peter Robert Fleming,[8] the Bedford collection is an indispensable and comprehensive resource for historians of cardiology.[9]

Bedford's interest in collecting rare books on the heart and circulation began when he was a registrar, evolving through his professional life into a unique and internationally acclaimed library now housed in the Harveian Library of the Royal College of Physicians. He spent the last few years of his life cataloguing his collection ... With the publication of the Catalogue of the Evan Bedford Library of Cardiology, Bedford considered his contribution to his craft complete.[2]

In 1935 in Marylebone, London, he married Audrey Selina Ely (b. 1902), daughter of Milton Victor Ely (b. 1873), chair of the Board of Governors of the National Heart Hospital. Evan and Audrey Bedford had two sons.[2]

Selected publications

References

  1. ^
    PMID 356866
    .
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Davis Evan Bedford". Munk's Roll, Volume VII, Royal College of Physicians.
  3. PMID 18609810
    .
  4. PMID 12484287
    .
  5. doi:10.4997/JRCPE.2017.316
    .
  6. PMID 4879971
    .
  7. PMC 199474
    .
  8. ^ "Peter Robert Fleming". Munk's Roll, Volume VII, Royal College of Physicians.
  9. ^ Fleming, Peter Robert (1997). A short history of cardiology. Wellcome Institute Series in the History of Medicine. Vol. 40. Rodopi.
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