John Golding was the son of Herbert Melhuish Golding DFC, a general practitioner in Bristol, where John was born. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School and St John Baptist College, Oxford, where he was a Sir Thomas White scholar. He gained a BA with honours in physiology and won an entrance scholarship to Westminster Hospital medical school. After qualifying he worked as a house physician at Westminster Hospital. Westminster Childrens’ Hospital, the Brompton Hospital and Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. From 1952-54 he served with the RAF in Iraq, before becoming medical registrar and later senior registrar at Westminster Hospital to W E Lloyd [Munk's Roll, Vol.VI, p.197] and Frank Dudley Hart.
John Golding became particularly interested in rheumatic disorders and in 1960 published a paper on the neuropathic and vascular complications of rheumatoid arthritis, and the early loss of vibration sense in some patients with this and other disorders; a subject which later formed the basis of his DM thesis. Corticosteroids had recently been introduced as a form of therapy for rheumatoid arthritis, and John had been involved in a number of clinical trials. In 1961 he was appointed consultant physician to the Royal Bath Hospital in Harrogate and to the rheumatology department of St James’s University Hospital in Leeds: he was also physician in charge of the chronic sick unit at Chapel Allerton Hospital, Leeds. He was clinical tutor in postgraduate medicine in the Harrogate area in 1970, and became examiner in clinical medicine and senior honorary lecturer in the faculty of medicine at Leeds University in 1972.
Golding took an active part in the first controlled double-blind multicentre clinical trial of D-penicillamine in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, which proved so worthwhile that it was introduced into orthodox anti-rheumatic practice. He was an excellent teacher and popular with the undergraduate and postgraduate medical students at Westminster, and later at Leeds. He was a good all-round clinician, interested in all fields of medicine and particulary in rheumatic disorders. The bulk of his work latterly was at the regional rheumatology centre in Harrogate, where he had lived for many years. Although severely incapacitated by a number of serious illnesses over a period of many years, he worked as a consultant physician until shortly before his death.
A devout, serious-minded Christian, he was an honorary medical officer to the general synod of the Church of England and a member of the Anglican Hospital Chaplaincy Council, and also a church warden of St Wilfred’s Church, Harrogate. He had a delightful sense of humour and a shy, gentle manner; an excellent speaker, with an occasional slight and attractive stammer, he did not push himself forward in any conversation.
John had married Myfanwy Miles, daughter of a farmer, in 1961 and they had two children, Joanna and James. The marriage was a very happy one. John’s brother, Philip, also qualified in medicine at Westminster Hospital medical school.
F Dudley Hart
[Brit.med.J., 1988,297,1123 ; Lancet, 1988,2,859]