George Newman (doctor)


Sir George Newman GBE, KCB FRSE was an English public health physician, Quaker, the first Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry of Health in England, and wrote a seminal treatise on the social problems causing infant mortality.

Biography

George Newman was born in Leominster, Herefordshire, the fourth of six children of Henry Stanley Newman and Mary Anna Pumphrey. His father was a Quaker who undertook several missionary journeys, including one to India, and edited The Friend, a Quaker journal. Newman was educated at two Quaker schools, Sidcot School in North Somerset and Bootham School in York. He initially planned to become a missionary, but then decided to study medicine, starting at the University of Edinburgh Medical School and continuing at King's College London. After qualifying he studied for his M.D. at Edinburgh, receiving the gold medal for his year, before winning a scholarship to study public health and gaining his Diploma in Public Health in 1895 from the University of Cambridge.
He became a demonstrator in bacteriology and lecturer in infectious diseases at King's. In 1900 he became Medical Officer to the Borough of Finsbury in inner London and the rural county of Bedfordshire. His experiences in these posts led him to publish Infant Mortality: a Social Problem in 1906. This has remained a medical classic, pointing out the unchanged infant mortality rate over the preceding fifty years, and identifying the causes and areas potentially open to intervention. He was Gresham Professor of Physic. In 1907 he was appointed by Sir Robert Morant, Permanent Secretary to the Board of Education, as Chief Medical Officer to the Board, and in 1919 he was also appointed Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry of Health. The annual reports he wrote for both these posts were widely acclaimed as important and influential

Family

In August 1898 he married Adelaide Constance Thorp, who was an artist. They had no children. They lived at Harrow Weald after he retired in 1935. He died in 1948 at The Retreat, York.

Quaker

Born into a Quaker family, he remained a committed Christian throughout his life. From 1899, for some forty years, he was the editor of the Friends' Quarterly Examiner, a Quaker journal. In autumn 1914 he was involved in the establishment of the Friends' Ambulance Unit, which provided medical care for soldiers and civilians in the war zone, and following the introduction of conscription in 1916 he helped to negotiate exemptions for Quakers already serving with the FAU.

Education

In 1923 Newman was invited to address the centenary celebrations of his old school, Bootham. He referred to Alcuin, an eighth century educator and deacon whose three guiding principles were: holy living and holy learning; teaching understanding rather than repetition; and, finally, that education should be 'wisely and liberally furnished'. Newman believed that Quaker schools such as Bootham embodied these principles. He maintained an interest in medical education, and in 1923 he wrote Recent Advances in Medical Education.

Public health

His initial contribution, Infant Mortality: a Social Problem, was the forerunner of many writings about public health which proved respected and influential, including: Hygiene and Public Health in 1917, Outline of the Practice of Preventative Medicine in 1919, The Rise of Preventative Medicine in 1932, and The Building of the Nation’s Health in 1939. His annual reports as the Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry of Health were eagerly awaited each year, and were widely regarded as authoritative monographs on a variety of aspects of this field.

Professional honours