Fillers
THE COLLEAGUE WHO CHANGED MY LIFE
BMJ 1996; 312 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.312.7044.1464 (Published 08 June 1996) Cite this as: BMJ 1996;312:1464
- Neville Conway
One of the just
A great doctor died last December. Few, I believe, would disagree with the adjective, except the man himself. Yet Alan Jacobs was not widely known, worked at a measured pace, and, I guess—being merely his awed senior house officer in 1961—probably shunned office. He carried out one major piece of research—on arterial embolism—based characteristically on painstaking clinical observation. It took him 16 years. His secretary joked she lost as many from her life, endlessly retyping what became, when he was 53, his DM thesis. Livingstone published it as a monograph, a notable honour.
A dignified career then, not an electrifying one, yet Jacobs made an impression on me which still …