Geoffrey Tovey

Geoffrey Harold Tovey

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Childhood and early life

Geoffrey Harold Tovey was born on 29 May 1916 at

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Career

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For a short while he worked as a GP in

After the war Dr Geoffrey Tovey returned to the Blood Transfusion Service unit in 1946 at Southmead Hospital, Bristol. In that year he was appointed Director of the South West Regional Blood Transfusion Service. It was in the evening of J D R Thomas's Cardiff marriage on 23 September 1950 that he went with his new wife Gwyneth from Bristol's Royal Hotel to the Reunion at Southmead Hospital of the wartime Blood Transfusion Unit, where they met several former colleagues who'd joined Dr Geoffrey Tovey's staff at the South West Regional Blood Transfusion Service. Dr Tovey held the post of Director from 1946 to 1978^[2]

Dr Tovey was one of the first surgeons regularly to perform intrauterine blood transfusions on unborn babies.^[1] In 1959 he advocated the induction of birth at 36 weeks pregnancy to prevent stillbirth in babies affected by Rhesus Haemolytic Disease; this subsequently saved many lives.^[1]

He performed early work on the typing of red cells and their antigens, white blood cells (Human Lymphocyte Antigens or HLAs), and the transfusion of platelets and later stem cells in the treatment of leukaemia.^[1]

He collaborated with transplant surgeons such as

In 1972 he founded and became the director of the

He was Consultant Adviser on Blood Transfusion at the Department of Health and Social Security from 1979 to 1981.[2]

Publications

He was the co-author of 70 papers between 1944 and 1978 and also published Techniques of fluid balance: Principles and management of water and electrolyte therapy^[3] (1957).

Honours

Tovey was appointed CBE in 1977.

Personal life

Tovey married Margaret Davies in 1941. They had two sons, Charles and Stuart — Charles died in 1973, leaving behind a grandson, James, who regained contact with Geoffrey, Margaret and Stuart in 1994.[1] As an enthusiastic genealogist in his spare time, Geoffrey traced his family history back to 1577; where records show a William Tovie^[5] as owner of The George Inn, Norton St Philip, Somerset, today claimed as one of the oldest public houses in the UK, first licensed to sell alcohol in 1397.

References