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John Bremner Purvis F/Mc Married Married: 1902 Elizabeth Annie Willisc | |||||||||||
| Victor Bremner Purvis [CFT #1361] Born: 1904 Died: 1995 |
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| b Entebbe, Uganda d Clifton Hampden VICTOR PURVIS was a colourful and talented eye-surgeon, who was the mainstay of Moorfields Eye Hospital in London through the war years, and thereafter a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Oxford. His earliest years were spent in Uganda, where his parents were missionaries, later returning to a quiet parish in Northumberland. The young Purvis attended Stockton-on-Tees Grammar School, where he became head boy, and Durham University, where he was president of the medical society and qualified in medicine in 1927. As his younger brother went to sea — only to be lost overboard on his first voyage — Victor entered general practice within easy reach of his parents' vicarage. But later, having taken a diploma in ophthalmology, he came to London as a Moorfields trainee. Early in the war most of the Moorfields consultants were dispersed either to the medical wings of the armed services or to provincial hospitals, leaving a few surgeons, most of whom had returned from retirement, to cope with the surge of patients. Purvis, by then a permanent resident at Moorfields, found himself taking over virtually all the clinics, and he remained there throughout the war. Unlike some of the smaller hospitals in the City and the East End, Moorfields resisted closure; the hospital's chairman confidently assured the Minister of Health that the medical staff would continue to work for nothing beyond their board and lodging. He placed the hospital under four medical directors, three older consultants and the then under-40 Purvis. One of the three seniors soon went to continue research on mustard gas to Oxford. whither Purvis was summoned on many Sundays to help deal with her operating lists. He often returned to find that some of the night would have to be spent in the Moorfields air-raid shelter. Though badly damaged, the hospital continued functioning throughout the war. Purvis's energy was prodigious. He not only attended nearly all the outpatient clinics, but lectured to any available students, efficiently disposed of cataracts and squints, boosted the morale of the staff (particularly that of the nurses), and managed to achieve worthwhile research, which included his invention of the Purvis streak retinoscope, an instrument still in use and for which he received no personal reward. His association with the Oxford Eye Hospital served him in good stead and he was appointed to the staff there after the war. A former administrator of the United Oxford Hospitals referred to him as "a handsome, twinkling man of enormous charm, a deft and minutely exact surgeon and someone who seemed in a flash to diagnose and measure by instinct in seconds rather than minutes. Indeed, he was known to refract a friend's eyes at one of his own parties while his patient was still having his first drink. His relaxed friendly almost mocking rapport. with his patients concealed the quickness of his hands and the speed of his thoughts." His energy and enjoyment of life continued into old age, by which time he was testing some of the grandsons and granddaughters of his early Oxfordshire patients for presbyopia. Outside his professional life he was constantly busy, whether as gardener, pianist, painter, host — or as contributor to the letters page of The Times. His second wife survives him together with a son and daughter from his first marriage and a son and daughter from his second. Denis Gibbs 1995 |
1: 1933 Ian Bremner Purvisc W/C 2: 1937 Julia Mackay Purvisc H/C 3: 1946 Lucia Elizabeth Purvisc H/C 4: 1951 Christopher Thomas Bremner Purvisc W/C | ||||||||||
| 4 Children | |||||||||||
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