The Turnstone: A Doctor’s Story

An account of more than 60 years of travel, medical research and clinical practice, this biography charts the career of the former Director of the Medico-Social Research Board, Dr. Geoffrey Dean. Born in Wales in 1918, he spent his early years in the north of England and trained to be a doctor in Liverpool (1936-1942) serving with distinction as a medical officer in Bomber Command. After higher medical training in Liverpool he moved to South Africa, where he lived with his family for the next 20 years, and established a busy consultant practice. During this period he studied the epidemiology of porphyria, a disease that can cause paralysis; his book The Porphyrias was first published in England and America in 1963. He also undertook studies on multiple sclerosis and lung cancer. He became Director of the Medico-Social Research Board of Ireland in 1968. Besides his research findings, the book also features an array of anecdotes and adventures from the author’s travels in Holland, Cyprus, Spain, Malta and China ranging from the threat of imprisonment in South Africa to a period spent as the personal physician to the multi-millionaire Governor of the Fiji Islands.