Cecil Wilfred Dickens Lewis

Cecil Wilfred Dickens Lewis

Cecil Lewis had a major influence on medical education in Western Australia, in New Zealand, and in Hong Kong. That influence has been felt, and continues to be felt, in many parts of the world as his students have carried their training widely.

A son of the vicarage, Cecil Lewis received a classical education at St John’s School, Leatherhead, Surrey, before entering the Welsh National School of Medicine in 1933. He completed a preclinical BSc in 1936 and graduated MB BCh, with distinction in public health, in 1939.

At the outbreak of the second world war he volunteered and served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) from 1940 to1946. Service as surgeon lieutenant in HMS Ripley, a Q-Class hunter of U boats in the Atlantic, was followed by service in a destroyer in North Atlantic convoys, 14 months as senior medical officer, Royal Navy, Reykjavik, Iceland, and finally a period as medical officer, Royal Marines, Southsea.

On return to civilian life he joined the staff of the Welsh National School of Medicine as a demonstrator and then lecturer in the Anatomy Department, and subsequently as lecturer then senior lecturer in surgery, with appointment as a consultant in surgery in the Cardiff United Hospitals.

He qualified FRCS in 1948 and MCh 1952. He was awarded the Jacksonian Prize of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1954, and appointed Hunterian professor of the college in 1955. His particular clinical research interests were melanoma and vascular surgery.

Visiting major surgical centres in North America in 1955, he added a wider knowledge of administration of surgical departments to his already substantial experience and academic achievements.

When the University of Western Australia was establishing a medical school the following year and seeking outstanding people from around the world to take up key academic positions, Cecil Lewis was ideally qualified for the post of foundation professor of surgery, a chair which he occupied with distinction for the next nine years.

He adhered to his principle that in life one should set goals and, having achieved a goal, be ready to move on to the next challenge. Consequently, when in 1965 the University of Auckland was looking for a foundation dean to set up New Zealand’s second medical school, he was ready for that challenge, and 1968 saw the first intake of students.

As an educationist he was a visionary and yet a very practical man. He had clear ideas of what a doctor should be and the curriculum and teaching methods of the Auckland school were intended to produce a well-rounded product, a man or woman able to minister not only to the physical needs of their patient but to treat them holistically—body, mind, and spirit.

His skills in writing, speaking, painting in water colours, playing a mean jazz clarinet, and having Welsh enthusiasm for rugby football—which ran to challenging a student who was a trialist for the All Blacks to bend a six inch nail with bare hands—endeared him to students. The regular dean’s lecture—usually given by an eminent national or international figure who happened to be in Auckland—attended by staff and students and followed by coffee and a friendly chat, was a highlight of the early days of the school, just as a similar innovation had been in Perth. Its aim, and the aim of the teaching methods in general, was to engender a climate of learning where the student was encouraged to develop as a well-rounded person, not merely as one who absorbed facts and succeeded in examinations.

When the first class graduated in Auckland, in keeping with his stated policy of never working in any position for more than 10 years, Cecil announced his intention to resign. He became the foundation professor and director of postgraduate medical education in the University of Hong Kong, where he pursued another equally successful goal until 1978.

Cecil Lewis was respected as a surgeon, an administrator. and an educator; he was admired for his scholarship, sportsmanship, and humour; he was loved for his humanity and vision.

Following a service in St Mary’s Priory Church, Abergavenny, where he had lived in retirement, he was laid to rest in Llanbedr Churchyard, where his early years had been spent in the vicarage and where early influences shaped the man he was to become.

He is survived by his second wife, Helen, and by two sons and a daughter and their families in Australia. [Wilma F Grant]