Hector MacDonald Cameron

Hector MacDonald Cameron

Former senior lecturer in pathology Edinburgh (b 20 December1922; q Belfast 1945; MD, FRCPath, OBE), died from heart failure on 27 January 2006.

Hector Cameron died in the Borders General Hospital of a failing heart that had given all it could in the course of his 83 years. He lived his life to the full, passionately believing that the world could be a better place and working hard to make it so. His deep humanity touched many, many people.

A pathologist specialising in the liver, he trained in Belfast and worked in England and Scotland before taking his family to Nairobi where he was part of the team setting up the new medical school. He did ground breaking work on Kaposi’s sarcoma, developed a clinic for the Maasai deep in the Rift Valley, and taught a new generation of Kenyan doctors. He was president of the Medical Missionary Society, a founding member of Amnesty International, an early adopter of Shelter, a longterm supporter of the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture, and a member of a peace delegation from the Oxford Research Group travelling to China to debate the hazards of nuclear weapons. On his return to Scotland from Kenya, he took up a senior post in Edinburgh and continued, there and on retirement in Peebles, his deep commitment to the church, translated into practical action in his work for the Borders Council on Alcohol. He was a fine musician, the church organist; a dedicated and creative gardener; and an intensely private family man who took great pleasure, with his dear wife, Frances, in his four children and 10 grandchildren.

In 1998, just after their golden wedding anniversary, Hector wrote a short reminiscence of his life to that point. It is a fitting epitaph: "The future is always hidden but, whatever comes, I hope we can meet it with grace and hope. I feel for people who see nothing beyond this life. We have hope—in spite of all the incredible, indeed absurd, vagaries of nature, I believe there is more to come. Else, from where comes all the best—love, compassion, beauty, music and art, imagination, curiosity, creativity? The mystery is there."

Imagination, curiosity, and creativity were among the qualities which made him such a fine man and fine doctor. [Lesley Morrison]