Dr Harold Charles James Ball

Personal Details 

Dr Harold Charles James Ball

28/07/1898 - 21/10/1984

Place of birth: Reigate, Surrey

Nationality: British

CRN: 723822

Education and qualifications

Professional life and career

Postgraduate career

After qualifying, Dr Ball went to south China as a medical missionary, returning to Britain in 1927 when he set up in practice in Kent, moving to Barton-on-Sea in 1937. After WW2 he pursued his interest in anaesthesia, and was one of the first to take the ‘two-part’ DA examination. He retired from general practice in 1948, working as a consultant anaesthetist in Southampton from 1950-63.

Professional interests and activities

Interested in local and epidural anaesthesia he was a pioneer in the treatment of intractable pain, introducing the concept of the pain clinic to Southampton as early as 1954 and writing (with Dr Douglas Pierce) a paper on the use of therapeutic nerve blocks in 1964. Skilled in the management of children, he was a popular dental anaesthetist, work he continued after his formal retirement.

Other biographical information

Before studying medicine Ball volunteered for service in the Artists’ Rifles during WW1. He was badly ‘gassed’ in France in 1917, and took part in the Archangel Campaign in Russia in 1918. He married his wife, Kate (also a medical missionary) in China, and she joined him in practice on their return. They had a son, Peter, a physician who became Dean of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, and three daughters. Even after retirement and the death of his wife he remained very active, taking up business and (fluent in Mandarin) journeying back to China, all in spite of increasing blindness from the corneal scarring resulting from the WW1 gassing.

Author and Sources

Author: Robert Julian Palmer

Sources and any other comments: Obituary. BMJ 1985; 290: 81 | Personal communication from Dr Douglas Pearce | Ancestry.co.uk accessed on 04/12/2016