Major General Reginald Joseph Gordon Morrison was director of medicine for the Army. He was born in St John’s, Antigua, the son of Robert Clement Morrison, a wool merchant, and Florence Adams née Gomes, the daughter of a timber merchant. He was educated at St Joseph’s College and then Dulwich College, and went to St Bartholomew’s Hospital to study medicine, qualifying in 1933.

He held junior posts at Bart’s in 1933 and 1934, and was then a resident medical officer for a year at Hove General Hospital.

In 1936, he was commissioned into the Army, and went to Egypt and then to Palestine. He was later surgeon to the commander-in-chief in India. By March 1943 he was attached to a general hospital near Tripoli, supporting Montgomery’s advance. A year later, he returned to England and then, towards the end of the war, was put in command of 187th Field Ambulance in Germany. He was mentioned in despatches.

From 1948 he was an adviser in medicine to East Africa Command, helping the RAMC extend its expertise in tropical diseases and training young doctors undertaking their National Service.

In 1951 he returned to England, where he was officer in charge of the medical division of the Queen Alexandra Military Hospital. Five years later, he was appointed to a post in the Far East. He then became professor of tropical medicine at the Royal Army Medical College, Millbank. From 1965 to 1969, he was director of medicine for the Army, with the rank of major general, and consulting physician to the War Office. When he retired from the Army in 1969, he joined the staff of the Royal Hospital Chelsea.

Together with William Herbert Hargreaves [Munk’s Roll, Vol.X, p.195], he wrote The practice of tropical medicine (London, Staples Press, 1965).

In 1959 he was appointed CBE and became the Queen’s honorary physician in 1961. He was an examiner for the Royal College of Physicians and also for London University.

In 1947 he married Norma Jacqueline Nicholson, the daughter of a farmer in New Zealand. They had two sons, David and Simon.

RCP editor

[The Times 10 February 2004]