Harold Thomas Swan

A son of the manse, Harold Thomas Swan was educated at Peterhead Academy and Edinburgh University, where his future wife, Elizabeth, was a fellow student. After qualification he served mainly in the Far East in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, being senior medical officer to a flotilla sweeping Japanese mines. Before his Sheffield appointment, posts held included registrar to Sir Stanley Davidson at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and a fellowship at New York University.

He was president of the British Society of Haematology during 1981-2 and of the Scottish Society of the History of Medicine during 1995-8, and he served as clinical dean at the Medical School of Sheffield University, being particularly devoted to teaching. His publications were not limited to haematology, and include a paper in Medical History in which the use of penicillin for superficial infections as early as 1930 in Sheffield is meticulously recorded. He published on the history of the Sheffield hospitals and medical school, and when the Sheffield Royal Hospital and Sheffield Royal Infirmary closed, being replaced by the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, he assembled and patiently catalogued extensive historic material. Some of this is on display and constitutes a lasting memorial to his efforts.

A most gentle, unassuming, and likable man, he loved music, particularly Bach, singing with the Sheffield Bach Choir, and during retirement in Edinburgh with the choir of St Giles Cathedral. He leaves a wife, three sons, and four grandchildren.