Former Consultant Physician, Ross Hall Hospital, Glasgow and the Gastro-intestinal Centre, Southern General Hospital, Glasgow, 1967-92. He gave much to Scottish and British Medicine, drawing upon his Irish roots, with a lively sense of the ridiculousness of life that walks hand in hand with its deadly seriousness. He was born at Courtown Harbour, County Wexford. Educated at Rockwell College, County Tipperary; and studied Medicine at University College, Dublin. After House appointments at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital. Dublin, Gerry came to the Western General Hospital and Royal Infirmary; Edinburgh He was Registrar, then Senior Registrar, Western General Hospital. His development as a scientist came as a member, of the scientific staff. At the Medical Research Council Clinical Endocrinology Unit, Edinburgh; Gerry was a very rounded clinician, often inspired in his insights based on a vast clinical knowledge. Patients were cared for with a deep kindness sometimes mixed with a candour which could be disconcerting but always meant to further the patients understanding of their condition and future.
As a clinical scientist he published more than 70 papers in first class journals. His scientific work related to the Holy Grail of acid and duodenal ulceration where he measured the glandular structure of the stomach. He also wrote many clinically based papers including automated history taking and recording of symptoms of dyspeptic patients. His excellence was recognised by his election as President of the British Society of Gastroenterology. He was a good fiddle player and a member and then Hon. President of the Scottish Fiddle Orchestra. He was married to .Janice Dodds Mathieson; and they had 1 son and two daughters.
Yeats probably had Gerry in mind when he wrote the fiddler of Dooney.
“When we come at the end of time
To Peter sitting in state……
And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With. ‘Here is the fiddler of Dooney’
And dance like a wave of the sea.”
Contributed by Martin Eastwood