Allan George Williams Whitfield
# Allan George Williams Whitfield

Allan George Williams Whitfield CBE FRCP (1909–1987) was an English physician.

## Biography

After education at Wellingborough School, A. George Whitfield studied medicine at the University of Birmingham, graduating there MB ChB (Birm.) in 1931. After house appointments at Birmingham General Hospital and at Queen's Hospital, Birmingham he joined a well-established general practice in Sutton Coldfield. He joined the RAMC Territorial Force in 1933. During WWII he served as second in command of a field ambulance in France and was mentioned in dispatches. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1942 and was appointed assistant director of medical services of the First Army. In 1943 a severe chest infection caused him to be invalided out, and he returned to general practice. He qualified MRCP in 1946. In 1947 he was appointed to Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham as medical registrar at the, then new, professorial department of medicine. There he became in 1948 consultant physician and lecturer in medicine to the University of Birmingham. He graduated MD in 1950 and PhD in 1955. At the University of Birmingham he was from 1955 to 1974 director of the board of graduate medical studies and also professor of medicine from 1966 to 1974. He was editor-in-chief of the Quarterly Journal of Medicine for 13 years.

   George Whitfield’s chief research interests were in lung volume, radiation damage to thoracic tissues and cardiomyopathy ... He was also interested in Victorian history and published a number of historical papers and two books Beloved Sir James, Sutton Coldfield 1982, and The First thirty-seven registrars of the College, Sutton Coldfield 1981, both published privately.

He was the author or co-author of approximately 200 publications. During the last decade of his life he wrote, with Sir Cyril Clarke, reports on clinical epidemiology in internal medicine.

   George Whitfield was typical of all that is best in general physicians, and he could sum up people admirably, as evidenced by the frequency with which he was asked to write obituaries for colleagues. Just before he died he had submitted a chapter to a book on medical writing, still to be published. His contribution dealt with writing an obituary for a colleague: ‘That,’ he said to a friend, with a smile, ‘will give you something to chuckle about after I’ve gone.’

In 1937 in Sutton Coldfield he married Barbara Franks. They had a daughter.

## Awards and honours

* 1953 — elected FRCP
* 1970 — President of the West Midlands Physicians Association
* 1974 — appointed CBE
* 1975 — Lumleian Lecturer on Ankylosing spondylitis
* 1978 — Fellow of the Faculty of Community Medicine
* 1983 — Croonian Sermonizer
* 1986 — Harveian Orator on Royal physicians
