Alex Paton (physician)

Alexander Paton (2 March 1924 – 12 September 2015) was a British gastroenterologist, writer and postgraduate dean for North-West London hospitals, who was a specialist in alcohol misuse.

Paton was one of the first intake of doctors into the British National Health Service and later became a registrar to Sheila Sherlock, a recognised authority on liver disease.

In 1959, he was appointed consultant physician to Dudley Road Hospital, Birmingham, where he taught medical students for the MRCP, established an endoscopy service and began a 20-year study of the effects of alcoholic liver cirrhosis.

[1][2][3] Paton was one of the London medical students who were sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, shortly after its liberation by the British troops, to assist Arnold Peter Meiklejohn in administering what was known as the "starvation diet" to the severely malnourished and dying inmates.

[4] In his memoirs, published in the British Medical Journal in 1981,[1] he described how on 4 April 1945 there was a proposed trip to Holland for 12 St Thomas's students.

After a briefing by Richard Doll, explaining how they were to feed the starving Dutch with an experimental mixture, they were asked to "keep detailed records".

[9] After house officer posts he spent two years’ doing national service in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Trieste.

[10] During this post, he kept a private diary in which he wrote about the research into liver disease, saying... "we and anyone else at Hammersmith use subjects for experiments who will not necessarily benefit by them".

[3] Here he taught postgraduate medical students who were preparing for the MRCP examination, established an endoscopy service and began a 20-year study of the effects of alcoholic liver cirrhosis.

[1][17][18][19] He played tennis, enjoyed climbing, skiing, walking, classical music, the arts, photography, natural history, church architecture and travelling.

[20][21] Paton wrote a number of articles for newspapers, edited work in the British Medical Journal for 50 years and was a member of Stephen Lock's BMJ writing workshops.