Dr George Fraser Purves
Personal Details
Dr George Fraser Purves MRCS LRCP MB BChir MA FFARCS DA
26/04/1915 to 20/10/2003
Place of birth: Glasgow, Scotland
Nationality: British
CRN: 534574
Education and qualifications
| General education | Attended high school in the north of England, where he was athletic champion and passed the Northern Universities Joint Matriculation in July 1931. Attended Sheffield University in 1932, winning both 100 yards and 220 yards sprints. Medical student at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge from 1933; captained the gymnastics team. |
|---|---|
| Primary medical qualification(s) | MRCS Eng., LRCP Lond., 1942 MB BChir, University of Cambridge, 1942 MA, University of Cambridge, 1942 |
| Initial Fellowship and type | FFARCS by Election |
| Year of Fellowship | 1953 |
| Other qualification(s) | DA (RCP&S), 1947 |
Professional life and career
Postgraduate career
After graduation early in 1942 Purves was a house officer at the Royal Infirmary in Sheffield. In October that year he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and by 1943 was serving at the Yol Prisoner of War Camp in India. He left Yol in 1944 to serve on a hospital ship HMHS Karapara, followed by service in a mobile surgical unit, stationed at Kuala Lumpur Malaya, Bandoeng Java, and IBGH Bareilly India. Achieving the rank of Major, he was demobilised and returned to England, taking by 1947 the post of anaesthetist at the City General Hospital in Sheffield. In 1949 he was appointed Consultant Anaesthetist (one of the first two) to the Sunderland Group of Hospitals. He remained in this post until his retirement about 1983.
Professional interests and activities
For the first two decades of his Consultant appointment he was the chief administrator of the Department of Anaesthetics in Sunderland. He was a Linkman (Northern England) for the AAGBI in 1974. He designed electrodes for a peripheral nerve stimulator (non-invasive), which enabled the twitch of the facial muscles to assess the degree of neuromuscular blockade during anaesthesia.
Other biographical information
Purves married Barbara Currell in 1941. In the Far East he suffered heat stroke and malaria which rendered him so gaunt that, on his return to England, his wife did not initially recognise him. A keen photographer, he won numerous awards for this artwork, assisted by an enlarger which he made himself using a precision lathe. He died at the age of 88, survived by his wife, three children (one of whom became an anaesthesiologist), and two grandchildren.
Author and sources
Author:
Dr Alistair McKenzie
Sources and comments:
[1] Purves PG. Obituary George Fraser Purves. BMJ 2003; 327: 1409. [2] Medical Registers and Directories. [3] https://italianprisonersofwar.com/tag/george-purves-british-anaesthetis… (Accessed 7 April 2025). [4] ancestry.co.uk