NHS CREATION OWED SO MUCH TO TOP MEDIC

The National Health Service was one of the most precious legacies of the Second World War.

And Sir William Jameson, the Perthborn, Aberdeen-educated scientist, was one of its leading architects.

He believed public health worked better if it involved the public and blazed so many new trails in his 10 years as chief medical officer that it’s difficult to count them.

After the war, he played critical roles in establishing the National Health Service and World Health Organisation.

Jameson didn’t want the CMO job in the first place, having previously compared the bitchiness of Whitehall’s health department to that of a chaotic girls’ school.

Out of a sense of duty, he was persuaded to take it in 1940 by Health Minister Michael MacDonald, (the son of former prime minister Ramsay).

Jameson attended

Aberdeen Grammar School. At Aberdeen University, he graduated first in arts before studying medicine and was president of the Students’ Representative Council in 1907.

Like many Scottish medical graduates, he went south for work – mainly in and around London.

In 1939, Whitehall adopted a more aggressive propaganda approach, perhaps mindful of the downside of strict censorship in the Great War. People found out anyway – through foreign media.

This was how the 1914 Christmas truce came to light. Another ban on coverage of the 1918 influenza pandemic also failed. It was called Spanish flu only because the news first came from neutral and censor-free Spain.

Jameson embraced this more proactive stance, making full use of radio, films and publicity. The focus was on what people could do, rather than, as with previous CMOs, simply lecturing them from on high.

He instituted monthly press conferences to brief the media on developments and campaigns. He spoke without notes and didn’t dodge questions.

Jameson inculcated the message that germs were more dangerous than Germans. In May 1941, he launched the UK’s first concerted vaccination campaign against diphtheria.

The timing couldn’t have been worse – the war was going badly and he had just lost two ministry medical colleagues in an air raid.

Britain had lagged way behind cities like Toronto and New York which had controlled the disease. Around 7,000 babies and children died between 1939 and 1941 from diphtheria – more than were killed by enemy bombs in the entire war.

More shockingly, he launched the diphtheria campaign with a radio broadcast on the BBC

– the first do so.

He pulled no punches from the start: “Have you ever seen a child suffering from a severe attack of diphtheria – the dirty, evil-smelling throat, the swollen neck glands, the horrible forms of paralysis that only too often follow the attack days or even weeks later?”

This extended to his conclusion: “In my view, it’s nothing short of a disgrace that there’s still so much diphtheria about. There needn’t be if only you will play your part.”

He had a settled family life, marrying fellow student Pauline from Lewis. They had two daughters.

Jameson’s role covered England and Wales. Then, as now, Scotland had its own CMO, Sir Andrew Davidson.

Joint working was the norm both for the emergency hospital service, preventing outbreaks resulting from bombing, and promoting public health. Frontline doctors and nurses also civil servant to needed to be updated, so the Scottish Health Bulletin was established to keep everyone in touch.

The health department was strengthened by appointing a range of bright civil servants who had ideas and were not afraid to share them.

Jameson was popular with his staff, although he was stickler for keeping personal matters completely away from work.

He was also the calming intermediary between health minister Nye Bevan and the British Medical Association (BMA) in the run-up to the creation of the NHS. Bevan trusted Mr Jameson and his fellow Scot, Sir William Douglas, permanent secretary at the health department.

In the course of attending meetings in New York, Paris and Geneva,

Jameson became a key architect of the World Health Organisation (WHO), leading the UK delegation at its first assembly in 1948.

Analogies can be stretched and circumstances are very different. But Jameson helped build the foundations of the bodies that are now centre stage in the Covid-19 pandemic.

His was the decade of unprecedented improvements in child health, despite the war and its aftermath. In 1941, 60 babies and children were dying from diphtheria every week, but by 1949 this had dropped to fewer than two.

Mental health was another taboo he confronted – it was never mentioned in any CMO annual reports until he covered it in 1948.

In his final press conference in 1950, as reported by the Press and Journal, he described himself as “an average boy” from Aberdeen Grammar School and Aberdeen University and a pretty rubbish golfer.”

Bevan thought differently, breaking another taboo in the 10th anniversary debate on the NHS in 1958 when he ignored the parliamentary convention of civil service anonymity by naming Jameson and Douglas.

He said: “The nation was extremely fortunate in having two eminent civil servants of that calibre at the ministry at that time.

“I am quite certain that if honorary members and the nation knew how much work they did and what a huge task it was, they would feel very grateful indeed.”