The Madras College Archive
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The Madras College Archive |
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Former Pupil Biographies Professor George Matthew Robertson FRCPE (1864 - 1932)
His next appointment was to Stirling and District Asylum
at Larbert, and there he successfully introduced the care of male patients
by female nurses. In 1908, Sir Thomas Clouston retired and Robertson was
appointed physician-superintendent of the Royal Morningside Asylum for the
Insane, or as it was later named, the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Mental
and Nervous Disorders. Robertson was simultaneously appointed lecturer on
mental diseases at the University of Edinburgh. He subsequently became the
first physician to hold a Chair in Psychiatry at the same institution,
when this was established in 1919. The Madras College Magazine for June 1932 reports: In the early part of this year the death took place in Edinburgh of Professor George Matthew Robertson, who since 1908 had been physician superintendent at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for mental and nervous disorders and since 1920 professor of psychiatry in the University of Edinburgh. Professor Robertson had been recently in ill-health, and only a week
before his death he intimated his resignation of these appointments, to
take effect in September next. The villa system of housing was adopted by him when at Murthly. During his tenure of office the system of nursing homes outside the hospital for those suffering from incipent mental disorders was widely adopted, and to his enterprise also was due the opening of the Jordanburn Nerve Hospital.
The British Medical Journal published his obituary on April 9th, 1932: GEORGE M. ROBERTSON, M.D., LL.D., F.R.C.P.ED. Physician-Superintendent of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital We had to announce last week with much regret the death, at Tipperlinn House, Edinburgh, on March 28th, of Professor George M. Robertson, in his sixty-ninth year. He had been in poor health for some time, and had intimated the resignation of his appointments to take effect next September. He took an active interest in his specialty almost up to the end, and within the past month had drawn up his annual report as physician-superintendent of Morningside, in which was included an acute and critical survey of legal changes at present desirable in connexion with the treatment of insane persons in Scotland. A son of the late Colonel John Robertson, C.IE., of the Indian Army, George Matthew Robertson was born in India; he received his early education at Madras College, St. Andrews, and studied medicine at Edinburgh where he graduated M.B., Ch.B. in 1885, and then acted as resident physician in the Royal Infirmary. Immediately afterwards he took up the study of mental diseases as assistant physician under Dr. T. S. Clouston at Morningside Asylum. There he remained till 1892, when he was appointed physician-superintendent of Murthly Asylum becoming, seven years later, physician superintendent of Larbert Asylum. He joined the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, as a Member in 1891, and two years later proceeded to the Fellowship, while the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh conferred upon him its honorary Fellowship in 1927. He did not elect to take the M.D. degree until 1913, when, however, he received a gold medal for his thesis, entitled "Observations on the early diagnosis, aetiology, prophylaxis, treatment, and signs of general paralysis of the insane," a subject which at that time was attracting great interest. On the retirement of Sir Thomas Clouston in 1910 Dr. Robertson became physician-superintendent of the Royal Morningside Asylum for the Insane, or, as it came to be called later, the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Mental and Nervous Disorders. At the same time Robertson became lecturer in the University of Edinburgh on mental diseases, a post which had also been held by Clouston. The increasing social importance of mental disorder and the great development in its treatment led the managers of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum to present to the University of Edinburgh a sum of £10,000 with the object of endowing a chair of psychiatry, on condition that the professor of psychiatry in the University and the physician-superintendent of the Royal Asylum should be the same person. Robertson became the first incumbent of this post in 1919. In addition to being a lecturer highly popular with his students, a painstaking administrator of the institution in which as superintendent he was responsible for the care of nearly a thousand patients, and a brilliant and daring innovator in regard to new methods of treatment, Professor Robertson found time to make numerous contributions to the literature of his special subject. His annual medical reports to the managers of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital were awaited with eager anticipation by the medical profession, because each dealt with some aspect of mental disorder which at the time was attracting attention. Among his other publications were articles on the
His eminence in his special subject and the great services he had rendered to the profession and the public were recognized by numerous honour s received from time to time. Thus he was medallist in 1892 and, later, president of the Royal Medico - Psychological Association. He took an interest in the work of the British 'Medical Association, and became president of its Edinburgh Branch in 1926, and twice acted as president of the Section for Mental Diseases, at the Annual Meetings in 1922 and in 1927. He had been Morison lecturer on mental diseases to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1911 and in 1913, and for a third time acted in this capacity in 1927. He was Maudsley lecturer in 1926. From an early stage of his career he was attracted by the historic humanitarian work that had been done by Pinel for the mentally afflicted, and he maintained a close connexion with the asylums of Paris, acting as a corresponding member of the Societe Clinique de Medecine Mentale de Paris, and being appointed vice-president of the Centenaire de Bayle at Paris in 1922. He was president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1925 to 1927, and in 1931 the University or St. Andrews conferred upon him its honorary LL.D. Sir Thomas Clouston had been a pioneer before 1892 in the matter of transforming asylums, which were then largely places of detention, into hospitals where mental disorder was to be treated on much the same lines as in hospitals for physical diseases. This alteration, which was a matter of gradual progress, received the special attention of Professor Robertson, and several of the most important steps that have been taken in this direction were due to his advocacy or actual introduction. The increasing employment of trained female nurses in the care of mental patients of both sexes received a great impetus from him, and was an important corollary to Clouston's earlier work. A movement which particularly originated with Robertson, and which was carried through against a considerable amount of criticism, was the institution of nursing homes for the treatment of doubtful or early mental cases which could not be treated satisfactorily at home, but which at the same time hardly required actual certification. Eight of these nursing homes, situated in the southern suburbs of Edinburgh and in the country, were, at his instigation, opened by the managers of the Mental Hospital. "During the last five years," he wrote, "720 patients have been treated in these homes, a convincing proof of their usefulness. They have come from all over the English-speaking world, and many have come from England and Ireland to escape certification." While these homes provided for mild mental cases among the more affluent of the community, the still greater need of some such provision for cases among the poorer classes, which were constantly drifting into asylums, led him to persuade the managers of the Mental Hospital to found Jordanburn Nerve Hospital for gratuitous advice and treatment, or treatment at a small charge. This hospital, which does not admit certified' cases of insanity, proved a great boon for -mild and incipient mental patients, and was the first of its kind in Britain; it is now in process of imitation -in several other places. Jordanburn Nerve Hospital, together with the West House Hospital, provide clinical cases for the University class in mental diseases, and an elaborate course of instruction, extending over two terms, was arranged there by Professor Robertson. Partly as the result of these innovations which he had-introduced, and. partly because of his genial, kindly, and confidence-producing personality, Professor Robertson's reputation was world-wide, and his opinion was often sought on questions both of administration and of policy. He was greatly interested in the Royal Commission on Lunacy of 1924, before which he gave evidence, and in the drafting of the Mental Treatment Bill for England which followed upon that Commission's report. The funeral took place at the Edinburgh Crematorium, Warriston, on March 31st, after a service held in St. Cuthbert's Parish Church, and was attended by a large number of representatives from the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Mental Disorders, the Edinburgh Corporation, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and the Royal Infirmary, as well as by many other colleagues ana friends. Dr. W. McAlister, medical superintendent, Bangour Mental Hospital, writes: The passing of Professor George Robertson removes from our midst one who for years dominated the whole field of Scottish psychiatry. His devotion to the specialty was whole-hearted, and as time passed his influence and position became the pivot round which every movement in the direction of progress revolved. He was in all essentials a great leader-endowed with courage, foresight, tenacity, and a spirit that never admitted defeat. It used to be said of Robertson, "Everything he touches turns to gold." There was often a tincture of envy in the remark as if he had earned his rewards too easily. Nothing could be further from the truth. If genius is the capacity for taking pains, then Robertson had it in ample measure. No one, except those who were privileged to work in intimate association with him, can have any idea how strenuously he laboured at the foundations of his many schemes. One of his favourite dicta was, "It's not the quality of thought, it's the amount of thought that matters," in devising some new departure. And so he liked to gather round him not only his supporters, but also his critics, in order that when the time was ripe for launching his proposals he might be certain that no relevant consideration had been ignored. Robertson, however, was anything but pedestrian in his methods. He had an amazing power of grasping, as it were in a flash, the essentials of a situation, whether it was a difficult clinical case, a tangled domestic situation, or an administrative problem. But he never allowed his uncanny intuition to run away with him, for he went to infinite pains to check his first impressions. The same quickness was manifest in every direction. A cursory glance through a new book usually sufficed to give him an accurate idea of what it was about, and a retentive memory enabled him to store away what was of interest to him. If one were asked what was the mainspring of his ceaseless activity, one would not be far wrong in attributing it to his sympathy with the insane. Busy man though he was, he was never too engrossed to find time for an old patient in distress. He did not suffer fools gladly-so long as they were sane fools. But to the afflicted he was patient and considerate to a degree. Nothing pleased him better than to take up the cudgels on their behalf, a thing he was always ready to do. If there was one thing he could not tolerate, that was to dismiss a patient's plea, however ill-founded it might appear, on the ground that it was "just a delusion." That same characteristic lay behind his ceaseless agitation for the amendment of the Lunacy Laws. It also explained why in season and out of season he advocated the cause of the insane. It was for this that he welcomed any honour which came his way. It was this that spurred him on to fight for the recognition of psychiatry as one of the most important branches of medicine, worthy of a place beside the others. To work with and for him was a liberal education. His "Why?" put a check at once on slipshod work or ill-thought-out notions. He was a relentless critic, without ever importing any element of personal rancour or bitterness. He strove to be just, and usually ended by being generous in his dealings with his subordinates. Any measure of success that came to them he welcomed with almost boyish satisfaction. It seems hard that he should have been cut off when within
sight of that leisure which he had so well earned. But his record of
achievement is a full one, such as is given to few men. Idleness to him
would have meant only weariness. And so we console ourselves with the
memory of one whom age never wearied, and whose personality was an example
and an inspiration to all. [The photograph reproduced is by E. R. Yerburg
and Son.] |
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