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From the Society’s first conception in 1951 Maurice Campbell was already one of us, giving of his counsel and promising a contact with the surviving members of the pre-war Society. He became the first honorary treasurer and contributed to discussions with a viewpoint based upon his deep knowledge of human nature, upon his fundamental and unshakeable common sense and often upon his wide medical knowledge.
He became the Society’s second Chairman, firm and tactful, keeping a careful watch on detail as membership expanded and the Society began to acquire an influence, maintaining the right balance between the formal and the informal.
As Dr. Maurice Campbell, D.M., F.R.C.P. he was one of the most eminent specialists in heart disease in the UK and for many years was the editor of the British Heart Journal, eventually being appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire his medical services during the WWII.
His love of the Canon may be attributed to the profound portrayal of medical matters on which Doyle wrote so brilliantly. He could recognise only too accurately the description of the “troublesome type of patient whom we all know only too well” and “the familiar faces at Out-Patients”. He used in all sincerity to urge his students to emulate Dr. Watson and to diagnose, and explain their diagnoses, as clearly as Watson did.
As a loyal son of Guy’s Hospital, he there delivered in 1934 his famous lecture, “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: A Medical Digression”. The lecture room was full; there was a repeat lecture; and then publication in 1935 in soft covers – a definitive study – revised and republished in 1951.
Then in 1953 Campbell put his tongue in his cheek and published another pamphlet, “The Hound of the Baskervilles; Dartmoor or Herefordshire?‘, the tenet of which was that the locale of The Hound of the Baskervilles was Herefordshire. As was to be expected, his wit, persuasiveness and sagacity shone through in this treatise.
Within our Society many of us would probably never have known so outstanding and so gentle a personality who illumined so percipiently the medical knowledge of Dr. John H. Watson and Dr. A. Conan Doyle. The Society. will ever remember-and think of him as-Dr. Campbell.
This summary is based on the obituary written by Colin Prestige which appeared in the SHJ 11/3 Winter 1973
