Austin Gresham, 1925-2009

The time delays in obituaries are odd. Austin Gresham, the histopathologist, died in July, but has so far only had an obituary in the Telegraph and the Times. I hope Guardian and Independent ones will come soon. I knew of him, and was surprised to find that he was younger than my father, by 13 years. With my childish sense of time, I thought the whole medical establishment of Cambridge were exactly the same age, born just before the first war. His name, and that of his wife, Gweneth Leigh, who was in charge of child health in Cambridge, would often crop up at meal times. My father, a GP, was never one to leave work behind when at the dinner table. As well as kittens, a regular table decoration in our house, he took some pleasure in reading medical journals and textbooks at table. I recall in particular a lavishly illustrated dermatology text, showing syphilitic lesions, which he pored over as we tucked into the help's steak and kidney pie Professor Gresham and my father both moved in that curious Cambridge medical no-man's land, not quite fully part of the university, nor fully within the NHS. I remember lying in bed hearing parties downstairs: the smells of gin and sherry, tobacco smoke (in those days doctors smoked like anything, whatever advice they might give their patients), women's scent, when she came to kiss me goodnight, my mother would be wearing lipstick, which she only ever put on for parties and parent's evenings at school.Later, when I worked in what would now be called a gap year as a hospital porter at Addenbrooke's, one of Professor Gresham's sons was also a porter.Both obituaries mention something he deplored, that his Colour Atlas of Forensic Pathology had been an inspiration for Damien Hirst.