Samuel James Cameron
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Samuel James Cameron (January 7, 1878 – October 29, 1959) was Regius Professor of Midwifery at Glasgow University from 1934 until 1942. The son of Caesarean Section pioneer Prof Murdoch Cameron, S.J. Cameron was among the leading British obstetricians and gynaecologists of his generation. A foundation Fellow of Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1929, Cameron was also for many years a member of the Gynaecological Visiting Society. A lifelong champion of the reputation of the founder of professional British midwifery, William Smellie, Cameron both named a maternity hospital in Lanark, Scotland, after him and saved Smellie’s library from permanent loss.
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[edit] Professional Life
Sam Cameron graduated from Glasgow University MB Ch.B, with commendation, in 1901. Among his professional appointments he spent a year as house-surgeon at the Chelsea Hospital for Woman, in London, working under the pre-eminent British surgeons, Sir John Bland-Sutton, Victor Bonney and Sir Comyns Berkeley, forming enduring friendships with all three. Later he became head of the gynaecological wards at the Glasgow Western Infirmary and in 1920 was appointed head of a gynaecological unit at the Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital. In October 1934 he succeeded to his father’s former position, replacing Munro Kerr in the chair of Regius Professor of Midwifery at Glasgow University.
A popular teacher, Cameron was famous for his notably quick surgical technique. He published four medical textbooks for his students, including A Manuel of Gynaecology: For Students and Practitioners (1915). After his retirement in 1942 Prof Cameron was awarded, as his father Murdoch Cameron had been, an honorary LL.D for his services to medicine and to Glasgow University.
[edit] William Smellie
Throughout his life Prof Cameron was an unceasing champion of the reputation of the father of modern British midwifery, William Smellie. In October 1956 he gave the first William Smellie lecture to the Glasgow Obstetrical Society having previously led the campaign for the renovation of Smellie’s tomb and having been instrumental in the efforts to salvage Smellie’s library at Lanark.
In 1929, in his Presidential address to the Glasgow Obstetric and Gynaecological Society Cameron said of Smellie: ‘Looking backwards, I see Smellie’s figure towering above all other’s […] As the founder of the modern practice of obstetrics, this plain, blunt, and indefatigable Scot has left a memory, to be cherished by all interested in this special department of medicine’ [1].
In honour of the plain and indefatigable Scot Professor Cameron, instrumental in the foundation of a maternity hospital in Lanark, named it the William Smellie Memorial Hospital.
[edit] Art Collector
A lifelong art collector, Cameron’s collection at his country residence at Stobieside, near Drumclog, Lanarkshire included works by the Scottish painters Allan Ramsay and Sir Henry Raeburn. Cameron also commissioned Denis Peploe, son of the Scottish painter, S.J. Peploe, to sculpt a statue of mother and child, which the Professor presented with great joy to the William Smellie Memorial Hospital.
[edit] Personal Life
Cameron married Marion Lean in Glasgow in 1908 and they had four children. A celebrated host, he was a yacht’s man and in later life a keen shot out with parties on the Lanarkshire moors. He died at Stobieside in 1959.
[edit] Bibliography
A Manuel of Gynaecology: For Students and Practitioners, 1915, London, Edward Arnold.
A Glasgow Manuel of Obstetrics (co-authored with John Hewitt, Archibald N McLellan, Robert A Lennie and John Hewitt), 1924, London, Edward Arnold.
Difficult Labour (co-authored with John Hewitt), 1926, London, Edward Arnold.
Uterine Haemorrhage (co-authored with John Hewitt), 1926, London, Edward Arnold.
[edit] References
[1] ‘William Smellie’, Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Vol. 36, No. 3, Autumn 1929, p.532.
See Also:
The Glasgow Herald, October 30 1959.
Peel, John (1976) The Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists: 1929-1969, London, Heinemann Medical Books.
