Dr Harold Rowell Youngman

Personal Details

Dr Harold Rowell Youngman MD FFARCS DA

15/12/1900 - 15/12/1984

Place of birth: Maidstone, Kent, England 

Nationality: British

CRN: 715927

 

 

General education	University of Cambridge and Medical School at St Thomas’s Hospital, London.
Primary medical qualification(s)	MRCS England, LRCP London, 1926 MB, BChir, University of Cambridge, 1926
Initial Fellowship and type	FFARCS by Election
Year of Fellowship	1953
Other qualification(s)	MA, University of Cambridge, 1926 MD, University of Cambridge, 1929 DA (RCP&S), 1939

 

Professional life and career

Postgraduate career

After graduation Youngman undertook house jobs at the Cornell Division of Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Next he was a Clinical Assistant in the Children’s Department at St Thomas’s Hospital before entering general practice in Cambridge by 1929, when he was also Medical Officer in the 4th District Cambridge Union and Chesterton Union Infirmary. By 1935 he was appointed Honorary Clinical Assistant in Ophthalmology and Honorary Anaesthetist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, as well as Staff Surgeon in the Cambs. Co. Constabulary. In the mid-1940s he served as a part-time anaesthetist in the E.M.S. By 1948 he was appointed Visiting Anaesthetist at Co. Hospital, Cambridge, and soon became a Consultant  Anaesthetist in the United Cambridge Hospitals and East Anglian Regional Hospital Board. He retired around 1966.  

Professional interests and activities

He was a member of the British Medical Association (BMA), the Cambridge Medical Society, the Royal Society of Medicine, and the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain & Ireland (AAGBI). For the BMA he served as Hon. Secretary of the Camb. & Hunts. Division. For the AAGBI he served on the Council for 1961-64. His broad interests were reflected in his continuation of general practice and his publications. At Addenbrooke’s Hospital he collaborated from 1959 onwards with physician Dr Leslie Barrett Cole in the treatment of tetanus by intravenous curare and ventilation. This led to the formation of the first intensive care unit at the hospital. Youngman was also proactive in pain management, epidural analgesia in labour, and post graduate education in anaesthesia. He wrote the chapter on Pain Relief in the textbook on Treatment of Cancer edited by JS Mitchell in 1965. 

Other biographical information

He married Mildred Ellen Burnet Adams in 1930 and they had a daughter and a son. In Cambridge he maintained a miniature botanical garden, which was visited by international botanists. In retirement he supported his wife (who practised as an artist under the name Lynda Burnet) with running the Cambridge Arts and Leisure Association. A popular man because of his modesty, kindness and sense of humour, he died at the age of 84, survived by his family.   

Author and Sources

Author

Alistair McKenzie

 

Sources and Comments For material which does not fit other categories

[1] Obituary HR Youngman MD, FFARCS, DA. BMJ 1985; 290: 326. 

[2] Medical Registers and Directories. 

[3] Horton JM. A Cambridge physician and curare for tetanus. The History of Anaesthesia Society Proceedings 1992; 11: 16-21. 

[4]  ancestry.co.uk