Irvine Loudon: Physician and graphic artist who became a leading authority on childbirth fever and maternal mortality

Loudon was gifted as a doctor, medical historian, and an artist - and had a surreal sense of humour

Loudon: he had a surreal sense of humour and enjoyed practical jokes

Irvine Loudon was gifted as a doctor, particularly in the field of obstetrics, as a medical historian, and as an artist. He published widely on childbirth fever and maternal mortality, culminating in 1994 in Death in Childbirth: An International Study of Maternal Care and Maternal Mortality 1800-1950. His conclusions influenced policy-makers as well as academics: the 2005 World Health Organisation Report Make Every Child and Mother Count cites Loudon first in its references.

Loudon was born in Cardiff in 1924, the son of a Scottish GP. After the Cathedral School in Llandaff and Dauntsey's School in Wiltshire he read medicine at The Queen's College, Oxford, joining the RAF during the war. After Oxford he chose general practice; he wanted to serve the community and be in charge of his own work. He specialised in obstetrics and delivered some 2,200 babies from Wantage and the surrounding villages. A forceful defender of the NHS (he refused to take private patients), he brought about one of the country's first purpose-built health centres next to the hospital.

An interest in medical history caused him in 1982 to join the Wellcome History of Medicine Unit as a research fellow. He was made an honorary fellow of Green College (now Green Templeton College), Oxford in 1999. His other books included Medical Care and the General Practitioner 1750-1850 and The Tragedy of Childbed Fever.

Loudon's interests included graphic art. Bored by the RAF mess, he had taken up sketching, and on his return to Oxford took classes in life drawing. In 1983 he learnt to etch at the Oxford Printmakers Co-operative – and his well-observed and skilfully made etchings brought election to the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 1995. He exhibited mostly at Bankside Gallery, London, Oxford Art Society and the Dolphin Gallery, Wantage.

He had a surreal sense of humour and enjoyed practical jokes. When Mary, one of his daughters, was invited to be a guest on a Radio 2 phone-in, she unwisely told him. One caller, "Ian from Wantage", began to ask a series of increasingly weird questions. Despite her frantic gestures that this was her father, the producer told her to carry on. Loudon's wife said he had locked himself in the bathroom with the phone. He was apparently exceptionally happy with himself after that.

SIMON FENWICK

Irvine Stuart Lees Loudon, physician, medical historian and artist: born Cardiff 1 August 1924; married 1948 Jean Norman (two daughters, and one daughter deceased; two sons); died Wantage, Oxfordshire 7 January 2015.