Gavin Arneil
Children’s kidney expert who once treated a sick chimpanzee
GAVIN ARNEIL, who has died aged 94, was a pioneer in the treatment of children with kidney disease; he established the first specialist children’s kidney unit in Britain and went on to found paediatric nephrology societies around the world.
In the 1950s there was little that could be done to help children who had kidney failure and most kidney disease was untreatable. Today it is rare for children to die of kidney failure and transplantation is usually successful.
Gavin Cranston Arneil was born in Glasgow on March 7 1923. His father was a university lecturer and his mother an infant teacher. He was educated at Jordanhill College School and, from 1940 to 1945, at Glasgow University, where he was a member of the Home Guard. Then followed National Service, including 18 months in research at the War Office.
He trained in paediatrics in Glasgow under James Hutchison and was appointed as consultant at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children (RHSC), where he developed his interest in kidney disease. His research led to a better understanding of the underlying pathology of kidney disease by his promotion of kidney biopsy. He was influenced by the pioneering work of Henry Barnett in New York and undertook research into vasopressin, a substance controlling kidney function. This led to his PHD.
Steroids were just becoming available, and he defined their use in nephrotic syndrome, helping to organise an international trial. He was also interested in rickets, which was a problem in the immigrant population in Glasgow, and managed virtually to eliminate this preventable disease.
However, a decade later, when it reappeared in Pakistani adolescents in the city, he had an educational cartoon dubbed into Hindi and Urdu, which was played between the main feature films at the Cosmo cinema. Rickets disappeared. He also helped to eliminate TB and established the Scottish Cot Death Trust.
In 1965, when the RHSC was condemned as unfit, Arneil led a six-person team that relocated all 350 beds to another site in 12 weeks, after which he became chairman of the commissioning group for the new RHSC at Yorkhill.
Having established Glasgow as a major centre for the study of kidney disease in children, Arneil was a founding member of the British Association of Paediatric Nephrology and was a leading figure in the establishment of the European and international associations, at various times being secretarygeneral, chairman or president of them all.
When Hutchison retired as Samson Gemmell Professor of Paediatrics in Glasgow, Arneil was disappointed not to succeed him, although he was awarded a personal chair. Instead he served as secretary general, then president, of the International Pediatric Association – the only Briton to hold the office in 100 years. In his presidential term the annual meeting was in the Philippines, a highlight of which for Arneil was dancing with Imelda Marcos.
Although he was a proud Glaswegian, in 1974 Arneil joined Professor John Forfar from Edinburgh to produce Forfar and Arneil’s Textbook of Paediatrics, now in its eighth edition.
In retirement he was a passionate member of the Friends of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, becoming honorary president. In 1987 he was awarded the St Mungo Prize, Glasgow’s highest civic award.
Arneil had a jolly sense of humour, sailed, golfed, gardened, quoted Burns freely and on one occasion successfully treated a sick chimpanzee at Glasgow Zoo. He was a large man with big hands into which tiny babies would disappear while being examined. To many he seemed aloof, an aura that he did little to dispel.
Gavin Arneil is survived by his wife June, whom he married in 1971, and by their daughter.
Gavin Arneil, born March 7 1923, died January 21 2018