Donald Duff (surgeon)

Donald Gordon Duff MBE MC FRCSE (1893 – 11 October 1968) was a Scottish surgeon and mountain rescue pioneer.

He proceeded to an area that was being heavily shelled, and at once organised stretcher parties, superintended the conveyance of wounded to his dug-out, and returned to make certain that no casualties were left.

[4] He worked in North Wales for 23 years and took charge of two Red Cross Hospitals and The Civil Defence Medical Services in Denbightshire.

[6] The Duff stretcher rapidly became standard equipment in Scottish Mountain rescue until replaced by that designed by Hamish MacInnes.

[7] The Scottish Mountain Heritage Collection based at Roy Bridge has an example that was kept at the Steall Hut in Glen Nevis[8] His S.M.C.

[11]In his obituary of Duff in the SMCJ Dr John Berkeley recounts how he first met him cycling in to work in the Belford on an old bike on a foul day.

[9] In the same journal Duff himself wrote Modelling ourselves on Hollywood as usual, we will soon spend our whole lives warmly enclosed and quiescent, mechanical transportation ensuring that our muscles atrophy even as we travel He regretted the passing of former generations of Highland people who had been at home on the hill and moved easily over the ground on foot.

No wonder, then, with toxic pollution of the air and over-eating (especially of sugar – unknown a generation or two back in the Highlands) our whole body chemistry is knocked awry.

His report to the Board on appointment praised the cleanliness and artistic orderliness of the hospital but highlighted serious problems with the facilities, most notably the lack of a physiotherapy room, inadequate maternity facilities, the lack of an anteroom to the operating theatre for anaesthetising patients and a mortuary likely to be "starkly repellent to bereaved relatives".