Edward Creed’s death at the early age of fifty-four was a great loss to King’s College Hospital, where his quiet but charming manner, his lucid teaching and his friendly eagerness to help in problems of pathology had endeared him to his students, assistants and colleagues. He was the son of Etheldreda Wright (née Spackman) Creed and the Rev. Colin John Creed, M.A., vicar of All Saints in Leicester, where Creed had his early education at Wyggeston School. At the age of seventeen he entered Trinity College, Oxford, as Millard scholar, and three years later qualified B.A. in the final honour school of natural science. His particular subject was chemistry, which he was later to turn to advantage in his leadership in clinical biochemistry although his main hospital work was in bacteriology.
King’s College had been his medical school; he entered it as one of the first two Burney Yeo scholars in 1910 and returned to it as a house physician in 1916 on his graduation. In that same year he joined the special reserve of the R.A.M.C. ; his last war-time appointment was as a captain working on malaria in Sierra Leone in 1918.
Two years later he was back at King’s College Hospital as bacteriologist, and in 1921 was elected both director of the pathological department and lecturer on bacteriology to the Medical School, in which he established a department of pathological investigation.
His publications were few and are to be found in The Lancet (1923, 2, 1212-13), Journal of Laryngology and Otology (1926, 141, 223-30), British Journal of Surgery (1930, 18, 96-8), Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology (1938, 46, 331-40), Medical Press (1938, 197, 462-5), and in the British encyclopaedia of medical practice; ed. by Sir Humphry Rolleston (1936, 1, 68-74, 629-42).
His keen interest in general medicine was shown in the part he played in the development of the Association of Clinical Pathologists.
During the Second World War Creed was sector pathologist in the Emergency Medical Service. He was also examiner in pathology to the Universities of Cambridge and London and to the Conjoint Board. In 1923 he had married Stella Parker, second daughter of Joseph Parker, C.S.I., of Sompting. They had two daughters.
Richard R Trail
[Brit.med.J., 1947, 2, 591; J.Clin.Path., 1948, 1, 195-6; Lancet, 1947, 2, 563-4; Med. Press, 1947, 218, 361; Times, 8 Oct. 1947.]