My Path to Pathology : By Rivers, Lakes and Seas: An Autobiography

This richly illustrated and entertaining memoir portrays Professor Gardner s varied life as a medical graduate in the UK and beyond. The author describes how his early life gave him the opportunity of studying for the wartime Natural Sciences Tripos in Cambridge, before graduating in Medicine in Edinburgh. Specialising in Internal Medicine, Professor Gardner then served as a physician with the British Army of the Rhine before turning to laboratory medicine in Cambridge. From Addenbrooke s hospital, Professor Gardner moved to Edinburgh for research in the pathology of the rheumatic diseases. A lectureship in pathology was followed first by a year at Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio and then, on his return, to an Edinburgh Senior Lectureship. In 1966 he became the first Director of the new Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, London. A period as Musgrave Professor of Pathology of the Queen s University of Belfast was followed by twelve years in a new Chair in the University of Manchester. Retiring to Edinburgh, the author accepted a Fellowship in osteoarticular pathology which led him to the most modern forms of microscopy while simultaneously allowing him to become Conservator of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Each chapter is linked to a particular waterway which featured in Professor Gardner s life and career and gives the book its subtitle "By Rivers, Lakes and Seas".