John Clive Baird Nesfield

Former general practitioner Whitstable, Kent, and medical officer St Augustine’s Hospital, Chartham, Kent (b Kashmir 1913; q LMSSA 1938 and Cambridge 1940), d 6 November 2003.

John spent his early years as a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps in India and Burma, following in the footsteps of his father, Major Vincent Nesfield, who had pioneered the use of chlorine in the purification of drinking water and accompanied the Younghusband expedition to Tibet in 1903.

The bulk of John’s working life was spent as a general practitioner. This was a role in which he became a trusted friend as well as doctor to many Whitstable families. He was a large man, both in frame and personality, whose calm reassuring manner made him an easy person to turn to in trouble. He had an intuitive understanding of the fact that every consultation had a psychological component at a time when such things were hardly spoken of. He gave the impression that visiting a patient at home was a privilege. This writer cannot be the only medical student who chose general practice because of John’s influence.

John spent the last 10 years before retirement as a medical officer in psychiatry. He had a rare ability to enter into the patient’s world and to demonstrate that what he found there could be accepted and coped with. Colleagues used to call on him, even after his retirement, to calm some of their more problematical patients.

He was an eccentric and lived in a house, full of exotic treasures, in Whitstable in which another eccentric doctor, Somerset Maugham, grew up. After retirement he moved to Sandhurst, Kent, where he tended his animals and his garden with the affection he had shown his patients. He leaves a wife, Stella; three children; and one grandchild. [Andrew Polmear]