Rodney Hemingfield Taylor was a physician, naval officer and bioethicist who saw active service in the First Gulf War, in Bosnia, Kosovo and Northern Ireland. During his naval career, he travelled to 33 countries in five continents. He was diagnosed with myeloproliferative disorder in 2006 and campaigned in 2010 for the right of patients to receive effective treatment with azacitidine, which had been at first refused by NICE. The campaign was successful in 2011. Rodney had four and a half years of treatment then underwent a stem cell transplant. He succumbed to leukaemia in May 2017.
Rodney was born in London during the Second World War. His father, Alfred Alan Taylor, was a chartered fuel technologist and his mother, Margaret Taylor (née Paine), was a ladies’ tailor. He was a direct descendant of the Reverend George Crabbe, an 18th century surgeon who became a poet and went into the church. Brought up in north London, Rodney attended Enfield Grammar School. He went to study physics at Bristol University, but changed to psychology. He worked for a few years as a clinical psychologist, but soon found a need for a greater understanding of neurology and medicine in general. He rapidly passed zoology A level and gained a place to do medicine at University College London and University College Hospital.
At school and at university he had developed an interest in music and drama so, not surprisingly, he co-directed the Fallopians revue at medical school. He met Janet Baldwin, a fellow medical student, later to be a consultant gynaecologist, whom he subsequently married in 1972, the year they both qualified.
He did house jobs at UCH, first with John Stokes [Munk’s Roll, Vol.XII, web] on the neurological unit and then on the surgical unit. Senior house officer posts followed at West Middlesex, Whittington and London Chest hospitals. He was a medical registrar at Central Middlesex, in gastroenterology rather than neurology, but he found the nervous supply of the gut more than fulfilling. He became a DHSS research fellow and gained a Wellcome senior research fellowship in clinical science. This saw him working at the Medical Research Council’s gastroenterology research unit at Central Middlesex Hospital, the Middlesex Hospital medical school and Oxford University’s physiology laboratory. He enjoyed the exciting mix of basic and clinical science, presentations, publications and an MD thesis, all while maintaining clinical practice as a senior lecturer and consultant physician. From 1984 to 1986 he was head of the human pharmacology research division at Beecham Pharmaceuticals.
He published widely on intestinal absorption, gastrointestinal pharmacology, peptic ulcer, pancreatic disease, diabetes, nutrition and colorectal cancer in many journals including The Lancet, BMJ, Gut, Clinical Science, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the British Journal of Surgery, Diabetologia and Diabetes.
An interest in boats, ships and the sea led Rodney to become a surgeon lieutenant in the London division of the Royal Naval Reserve in 1977. He subsequently joined the Royal Navy on a medium career 16-year commission in 1986. After three winters of sea-time in the Arctic and the South Atlantic, he was appointed to the Royal Naval Hospital, Haslar as a consultant physician and gastroenterologist. He was the Royal College of Physicians’ professor of naval medicine from 1988 to 1994. He was medical director at Haslar, associate postgraduate dean and defence consultant adviser to the Surgeon General.
He held outside appointments at the Royal College of Physicians, Southampton University, the General Medical Council, the Healthcare Commission, the King’s Fund, the National Clinical Assessment Service and other national and international organisations, all of which prompted him to take an MBA. He served on the council of the British Society of Gastroenterology and was medical director of the Digestive Disorders Foundation. On retirement from the Royal Navy in 2001, he took up the post of medical director and consultant physician at Ealing Hospital, retiring from clinical practice in 2007.
He studied on the history of medicine course at the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London in 1991. After gaining the history of medicine diploma, he took the philosophy of medicine course and gained that diploma. He served on the faculty of the history and philosophy of medicine and pharmacy at the Society of Apothecaries as a fellow, secretary, deputy president and president. He was an examiner in the history of medicine from 1996 and the Society’s convener of examiners. He became a yeoman of the Society of Apothecaries in 1997, a liveryman in 2001 and an assistant in 2006. He joined the private court in 2010 and served as master from 2012 to 2013. He worked tirelessly to ensure that the quadricentennial anniversary of the Society of Apothecaries in 2017 and the bicentennial of the Apothecaries’ Act in 2015 would be recognised and celebrated in appropriate style. This required much additional fundraising over and above the normal charitable activities of the Society. He was also a liveryman of the Barbers’ Company.
It was at Apothecaries’ Hall that the author, an ENT surgeon in the Royal Air Force, renewed his acquaintance with Rodney Taylor, having previously met him on joining the renamed Royal Hospital Haslar when it became a tri-Service hospital in 1996. The friction occasionally arising from the contact of the new arrivals with the Navy’s traditions was dealt with by Rodney’s diplomatic and tactful but resolute discipline. We met again at the Apothecaries at a lively livery dinner when all the serving and retired military liverymen and yeomen were encouraged to wear their uniform and the hospitable Rodney presided as master wearing full captain’s tail coat mess dress.
Rodney undertook an MA in bioethics and was visiting professor in the school of theology, philosophy and history at St Mary’s University College and tutor in medical ethics and law at Imperial College’s faculty of medicine. He was a trustee and chairman of two cancer support charities. He was a churchwarden, which demanded a good deal of diplomacy. He was a wandsman at St Paul’s Cathedral. Rodney and Janet loved music and they sang in a chamber choir and enjoyed opera. They delighted in spending time on yachts (he was a yachtmaster) and narrow boats. Travel, English churches and choral evensong gave them great pleasure.
He passed away peacefully, with his family around him. He was survived by his wife Janet, their daughter Alice, a veterinary surgeon, their son Romilly, an economist, and their daughter Beatrice, a teacher. There are seven grandchildren.
John Skipper
[MDS UK Patient Support Group Rodney Taylor – MDS experience https://mdspatientsupport.org.uk/rodney-taylor-mds-experience-2 – accessed 22 May 2019; MDS UK Patient Support Group MDS UK Tribute to Professor Rodney Taylor (1942-2017) 16 May 2017 https://mdspatientsupport.org.uk/mds-uk-tribute-professor-rodney-taylor-1942-2017 – accessed 22 May 2019; The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries Professor Rodney Taylor, 1942-2017 26 May 2017 www.apothecaries.org/professor-rodney-taylor-1942-2017/ – accessed 22 May 2019]