Obituary: Ernest Frizelle

Up to the Second World War anaesthetics were fairly primitive, using only chloroform or ether, as muscle relaxant techniques were yet to evolve. Ernest Frizelle's professional life spanned such critical developments in surgery. The whole of his career was spent in general surgery, whereas specialising is the norm today.

A man of outstanding brilliance in his selection of patients and in his sheer dexterity, Frizelle would none the less take his fair share of tonsillectomies and other straightforward operations. He often removed 30 children's tonsils in a morning, and the children returned home by bus in the afternoon. He retired in 1965 after 40 years of surgery, and began work on the history of the Leicester Royal Infirmary, which he had first entered as a resident houseman in 1927.

Frizelle loved the English language, literature and history, and was widely read. He could have succeeded in any of several careers when he gained a university place at the age of 16 to read Medicine, halfway through the First World War. He was to excel as a surgeon, and in 1957 he was elected to the elite Moynihan Chirurgical Club for the advancement of surgical technique and education in the provincial universities, its only member at the time from a non-teaching hospital.

Houseman jobs in Great Yarmouth, Norwich, Sheffield and Leicester were followed by his first appointment as an honorary assistant surgeon in Southport from 1929 to 1933, after which he returned to Leicester Royal Infirmary. This was then a voluntary hospital in which free treatment was given where needed, and staff were paid an honorarium of pounds 100.

In common with others, Frizelle also practised privately. This could have been a lucrative source of income, but he deliberately charged only modest fees. He became well known for his acumen and good judgment, which was combined with an ongoing interest in patients' wellbeing made possible by his unusual facility for remembering detail. He had a warm and gracious bedside manner.

Ernest Frizelle was the eldest of five children, born in Holywood, Co Down, in 1900, exactly 100 days before the death of Queen Victoria. He was educated at Sullivan Upper School, Queen's University, Belfast, and the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh. His father was manager of the local gas-works and twice President of the Irish Association of Gas Engineers. In 1933 he married Muriel Jamie, daughter of a general practitioner in Coalville, Leicestershire.

Although he remained in England, his affection for the Province never waned, and he kept in close touch with its affairs, assuming the Presidency of the Leicester Ulster Society in 1962. He revisited frequently, right up to his 96th year.

In 1965 he retired as senior surgeon, and was granted the title Surgeon Emeritus to the Royal Infirmary. Service in this hospital had become his life's work, and he wanted to prepare a short history for its bicentenary in 1971. It was this which later grew into the extensive and definitive Life and Times of the Leicester Royal Infirmary: the makings of a teaching hospital 1766-1980. This took nearly 25 years of research, ran to 620 pages and weighed three kilos. To trace the growth of this provincial hospital over two centuries was to trace the social history of the whole area, a task which fitted well with Frizelle's interdisciplinary skills. It was in recognition of this unique and authoritative work that the De Montfort University, Leicester, conferred an honorary DSc on him in 1995.

Throughout his professional life "Friz" was supremely interested in his patients, and not in medical politics. He was a godly man with a special love for the epistles of St Paul which he read and re-read as he sought to apply the Bible's authority to his professional life. This was to leave an impression on generations of younger men who were trained under his quiet influence and who looked to him for advice. The esteem and affection in which he was held was reflected in the number of doctors who entrusted their families to his care in the operating theatre. He had a winsome way and an appropriate humour, and would quip, "You'll recover from everything, except the last thing."

"Friz" taught himself word processing at the age of 90, and would voluntarily type manuscripts for publication. He was assiduous in his accuracy and unbending in the high quality of grammar and syntax he demanded from anything which came out of his printer. Given his own lucid thinking, his wide general knowledge, and his felicity of expression, he could not resist editing as he went, for substance or for style. He continued to work on scripts until a matter of weeks before he died.

Julia Cameron

Ernest Reginald Frizelle, surgeon and historian: born Holywood, Co Down 24 October 1900; married 1933 Muriel Jamie (died 1974; one daughter); died Leicester 29 August 1997.