Patrick Cox was born in Chelmsford, Essex, the son of a doctor, and was educated at Lancing College and St Edmund Hall, Oxford University. He went on to complete his clinical training at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he was awarded the Kirkes scholarship and gold medal for medicine, the Walsham prize for surgical pathology and was runner-up in the Brackenbury scholarship in surgery.

In 1945 he was appointed house physician to the medical unit at St Bartholomew’s under R V Christie [Munk’s Roll, Vol.VIII, p.86] and was later house physician to the consultant paediatrician, Charles Harris [Munk’s Roll, Vol.VI, p.224]. He became a demonstrator in physiology and pharmacology in 1946, followed by his appointment as chief assistant to William Aldren Turner [Munk’s Roll, Vol.IV, p.390] at the department of neurology. This training period was a good introduction to his future as a paediatrician with a special interest in neurology and applied physiology.

After a period in National Service between 1948 and 1950, as a medical specialist in the RAF, he was appointed to the junior staff at Great Ormond Street’s Hospital for Sick Children, first as a house physician and later as a registrar.

In July 1958, after eight months at the Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, he became a lecturer in paediatrics at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School. In August of the same year he was appointed senior lecturer in paediatrics and an honorary consultant paediatrician, a post he was to hold until his retirement. This post became part time when he became a consultant paediatrician at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where from June 1970 he became physician in charge of the department of child health. He retired from both hospitals in September 1983.

At the St Mary’s Group he was particularly involved with the Paddington Green Children’s Hospital. He took a lead in developing community paediatric services in Westminster and was a pioneer of community care for children. Throughout his career he had an onerous undergraduate teaching load at both hospitals. His junior colleagues particularly relied on his clinical acumen and expertise for diagnosis in unusual paediatric cases.

He married Dorothy Joan in 1946 and they had three children. He died accidentally while tending his garden.

J A Walker-Smith