Working-class boy, pioneer in coronary care and true gentleman
MY CLOSE FRIEND VEITCH
NOT many frail 93-year-olds would give up their chair for a lady in a crowded waiting room or feel the need to apologise for not wearing a tie on a warm day, but not many people were like my dear friend Thomas Davidson Veitch Lawrie.
Veitch was a working-class Glasgow boy who became a pioneer professor of cardiology and the founder of the first coronary care unit in Scotland.
My own cardiac doctor once described him to me as ‘a legend in his own lifetime’ in the profession. Though I lived next door to Veitch and his wife Edith for ten years in Giffnock, Renfrewshire, that is something I never heard from him – such was the gentleman he was.
Born the son of a train driver in Springburn in 1920, he graduated from the University of Glasgow before serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps in India and Burma.
On his return to the UK, he specialised in cardiology. After the founding of the NHS in 1948, he became a member of the cardiology department at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. In 1966, he was appointed the first Walton Professor of Medical Cardiology at the University of Glasgow.
Veitch established that raised cholesterol was a factor in the development of atherosclerosis and led one of the earliest trials of thrombolysis (‘clot-busting’) in the treatment of coronary artery occlusion.
He subsequently established the first coronary care unit in Scotland. One of his most important contributions was the application of computer technology to electrocardiology, leading to the automated interpretation of electrocardiograms. This became known as the Glasgow Program and is currently used worldwide, under licence from the University of Glasgow.
But the reason for me writing this tribute is not because of his medical achievements. I wanted to highlight Veitch as the gentleman he was, a kind man and a wonderful neighbour. He had no hobbies save a golf handicap of six.
But he was devoted to Edith, his former secretary, whom he married in 1972. Her death preceded his own, days before his 95th birthday, by only a few weeks.
Professor Lawrie was a quiet, polite, unassuming and remarkable man whose distinguished career made an outstanding contribution to medical science. He was also a true gentleman. He is greatly missed.
THOMAS DAVIDSON VEITCH LAWRIE, born September 7, 1920, died September 3, 2015, aged 94.