Arthur Crisp, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of London at St. George’s Medical School from 1967-1995, and dean of the faculty of medicine from 1976-1980, died in October 2006..
He had trained at St. George’s and became famous and internationally respected because of his clinical research in the field of anorexia nervosa. He studied its psychopathology, aetiology and pathogenesis and taught that its core pathognomonic feature is a phobic avoidance of normal body weight. He also studied the relationship between sleep and nutrition, migraine and the psychosomatic aspects of myocardial infarction, irritable bowel syndrome and writer’s cramp.
Crisp was a great believer that psychiatry required a broad spectrum of clinical knowledge and skills gleaned from generalist and specialist medicine. He believed that pharmacological, psychodynamic and behavioural approaches were all relevant.
Perhaps history will honour him most for his wok on undergraduate and postgraduate medical education and training both in the UK and Europe, and for integrating psychiatry into the final medical examination for the University of London; for his editorship of the British Journal of Psychology, and finally his service to the GMC and to the WHO.