Dr William Campbell MD, FRCR

Dr William Campbell MD, FRCR

Bill Campbell was born on 17th April, 1917 in Barrow-in-Furness, an affection for the Lake District remained with him throughout his life. After grammar school in Barrow, he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and was then House Physician at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

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17 April 1917 to 12 March 2006

With the outbreak of war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was accepted for training in radiology, despite his young age. He landed in Normandy on 12th June, 1944 and was radiologist to a field hospital there. He was posted to India and worked in Bangalore throughout 1945. He contributed to publications on war wounds of the chest and abdomen.

After the war he was appointed Consultant Radiologist to the Queen Victoria Hospital. Working with the maxillofacial surgeons in East Grinstead he developed special expertise in the facial radiology, and described Campbell's lines for the diagnosis of facial fractures. The mandibular joint and tear ducts became areas of particular interest to him and he wrote an MD thesis on these in the 1960s. He was regarded as a gifted teacher and lecturer, receiving regular invitations to lecture in the UK and occasionally abroad, including New York, Harvard, and San Francisco.

As a single handed consultant he shouldered a constant and unremitting burden of general radiology, in addition to the specialist maxillofacial work. Even after retirement he was in demand for locum work and found himself presented with huge caseloads, which it was well known he could handle (one hundred and eight barium studies in a week was quite demanding for a sixty eight year old!). He was a clinician at heart, who talked sympathetically yet enquiringly to his patients and examined them, and who advised general practitioners with a helpful and supportive style.

Away from the hospital, Bill Campbell was utterly devoted to his wife, Jill, and to his three children, Bruce, Lorna and Michael. He had a great sense of fun and moulded a close and very loving family. When Jill died after a long illness, he lost his will to go on. His major stroke and rapid demise were a welcome release, and his foresightedness in preparing an Advance Directive refusing active treatment was an example which others might wish to emulate. He has left his three children, with the happiest of memories of a kind and humble man, and a wonderful father.