AT THE HEART OF THE ACTION
Eminentnicardiologistprofessorfrankpantridgemcwasajapaneseprisonerofwarlongbeforeheinventedthelife-savingportabledefibrillator.as wemarkthe75thanniversaryofvjdaytoday,ivanlittle talkstohisbiographeraboutthelarger-than-lifecharacterwhoseexploitsreadlikefic
The temptation for a librarian tasked with filing a new book about Frank Pantridge would be to put it in the fiction section. For even the most fertile imagination would be challenged to come up with a real-life story like that of the late Hillsborough man.
Yet every word of Cecil Lowry’s biography about the pioneering inventor of the life-saving portable defibrillator is true. And a bronze statue of Pantridge stands proudly outside Lisburn’s civic centre as a testimony to his extraordinary achievements, but not just as a medic.
And the fact that the new book has been brought out by military publishers gives the clue to another side of Professor Pantridge who suffered horrendous treatment as a prisoner of war in Burma under one of the most brutal regimes in the world, Japan during the Second World War.
And, today, on the 75th anniversary of VJ (Victory in Japan) Day, the book, Frank Pantridge MC: Japanese Prisoner of War and Inventor of the Portable Defibrillator, reveals just how hard it was for tortured soldiers like him to forgive and forget.
Olympic golden girl Mary Peters, who was a close friend, told Lowry that, on one occasion, Pantridge didn’t return to collect a British-made car he’d left in a garage for a service after he was informed by a mechanic that the engine was Japanese. And the book also tells how Pantridge once poured a pint of Guinness over the head of a visiting Japanese dignitary to Northern Ireland.
Lowry discloses how Pantridge was flown to Mullaghmore after a boat belonging to Lord Mountbatten — who, ironically, played a huge role in the Burma campaign — was blown up by the IRA in 1979.
“Frank was taken by helicopter to Mullaghmore to see if he could save any lives there,” says Lowry.
“But four people, including Lord Mountbatten, died.”
The Queen later sent Pantridge a message thanking him for his efforts, even though he said he wasn’t able to help the victims.
Tracing his military service, Lowry, who’d never heard of Pantridge until three years ago, recounts how, in 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, the subject of his book, who graduated from Queen’s University, Belfast and was a young doctor in the Royal Victoria Hospital, was commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps.
A year-and-a-half later, he was posted to Singapore on attachment to the Gordon Highlanders as their medical officer.
But, in February 1942, after a massive Japanese force had pushed the Allied troops down the Malayan peninsula towards Singapore, they surrendered.
No fewer than 137,000 Allied soldiers were taken as prisoners of war after Singapore fell. Among them was Pantridge. But he didn’t go down quietly. During the retreat, at Johore, Pantridge was wounded and his actions earned him the Military Cross with the citation reading: “He was absolutely cool under the heaviest fire and completely regardless of his own personal safety at all times.”
The author’s father, Hugh Lowry, like Pantridge, was to spend the next three-and-a-half years as a POW, but there’s no evidence that the two men ever met. What is certain, however, is that they endured the same cruelty and brutality in their different spells in the notorious Changi POW camp and as they worked on the infamous Burma-siam railway, which prisoners were forced to build.
The death tolls on the railway were grim. Of Pantridge’s group of 7,000, only a few hundred survived. But even though he was ill, friends said he displayed a remarkable will to survive.
On August 6 and 9, 1945, Pantridge and Lowry and thousands of other prisoners were freed after the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagaski which led to Japan surrendering and finally ended the Second World War.
Back home, an emaciated Pantridge was plagued with even more illness, but he eventually recovered from his horrendous ordeal at Changi and got back to work.
After his experiences in the POW camps of falling foul of the normally fatal cardiac disease beriberi — where protein deficiency damages the heart — Pantridge started to specialise in heart diseases and after spells at QUB and in America, he was appointed consultant physician and cardiologist at the RVH.
And in the 1960s, the man who would eventually be hailed as “the father of emergency medicine” invented the portable defibrillator, which was listed in 2018 as one of the UK’S best breakthroughs.
Lowry, who’s originally from Downpatrick, but now lives in England, charts how Pantridge was convinced that deaths from heart attacks could be significantly reduced if a way could be found of taking the large and bulking defibrillators that were available in hospitals out to patients.
Lowry writes: “Pantridge produced the world’s first portable defibrillator in 1965, initially operating from a specially equipped ambulance, his prototype ran off car batteries and weighed in at around 70 kilos. As a result, Belfast became the safest place in the British Isles to have a heart attack during the late 1960s.
“His initial defibrillator gradually evolved into the small compact units so prevalent in workplaces today and subsequently into the mini implantable devices placed into the chests of patients.”
Yet, it had taken nearly 16 years for Pantridge to win over a sceptical medical establishment
to his innovation, which is now responsible for saving countless lives every day including those of famous people who feature in the book, including former US President Lyndon B Johnston.
Spurs footballer Fabrice Muamba, who collapsed during a match in 2012, was also saved by a defibrillator, as was another ex-white Hart Lane star and England manager, Glenn Hoddle, and golfing legend Bernard Gallacher.
Pantridge, who never married, retired in 1984 and wrote his autobiography, An Unquiet Life, mainly about his medical career, five years later before his death on Boxing Day 2004 at the age of 88.
Lowry says that Pantridge could be difficult and he quotes Mary Peters as saying: “He fell out with a lot of people in the hospital.
He was intolerant of people who he thought were ignorant of his ability and of his knowledge. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, either. I loved him though.”
Lowry concurs: “He did upset a lot of people along the way, but he got the job done.”
An interesting footnote to the Pantridge story is how the author met and became good friends with Patrick Toosey, whose father, Brigadier Philip Toosey, inspired the award-winning movie The Bridge on the
River Kwai, loosely based on the construction of the Burma railway.
In 2010, Patrick had a heart attack in Liverpool and his life was saved by ... a Pantridge portable defibrillator.