David Hedley Wilson, Collection

Lecture notes, reports, publications, photographs, plans, film reels and slides.

David Wilson was born in Leeds in 1928 and was educated at Roundhay School in Leeds, and the age of fifteen, won a scholarship to study medicine at Leeds University, living at Rawdon Technological College. Wilson qualified as a doctor in 1951, and after posts in surgery, casualty and obstetrics in Leeds, he took a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene in 1954. That same year, Wilson, together with his wife and daughter, visited the Belgian Congo, where they stayed until 1968, as a missionary doctor in a hospital near the Angolan border at Kimpese. After staying in Kimpese and treating patients injured during the Civil War in Congo, Wilson and his family returned to Yorkshire in 1968 and in 1970 he was appointed as a consultant in accident and emergency medicine at Leeds General Infirmary. From 1970 onwards Wilson pioneered the growth of accident and emergency medicine and lectured around the world on the subject, also campaigning for the use of seat belts and against drink-driving. He was appointed postgraduate dean of medical education at the University of Leeds in 1986, became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1988, and in 1990 was appointed to the chief medical officer's Forum on Education and Training in the Health Service.

The collection relates to Wilson's work when he returned to Leeds from 1970, including lectures and papers compiled by Wilson, research done by Wilson on cats trying to regenerate nerves, and photographic prints from the Medical Library at Leeds, which Wilson received when putting together the mural in the Accident and Emergency Department at the University of Leeds in 1987.

Open

Donated to Thackray Museum of Medicine by Susan Wilson, 2015

Not permitted

Not expected