John Trounce qualified from Guy's Hospital in 1943 with honours in medicine and pathology and obtained the MRCP in the following year. He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps from 1944 to 1947. During this time he showed effortless capacity to get on with people by, as an Englishman, becoming regimental medical officer in the Welsh Regiment, and he was mentioned in despatches. The reason for the latter remains uncertain and characteristically was never discussed.
On return to civilian life he worked successively at Guy's, the Brompton, and the National Heart Hospitals. He took on dual responsibilities in the departments of medicine and pharmacology in the medical school, and this important contribution was recognised by the school when he became the first reader in therapeutics in the University of London in 1958. In 1964 he became the first professor of clinical pharmacology at Guy's Hospital Medical School.
Following the tenure of a research fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, in 1960-1, he returned to Guy's to set up the first of the three departments which he founded during his career. Under the most severe restrictions he started peritoneal and haemodialysis at Guy's and laid the foundations of the internationally acclaimed Guy's Renal and Dialysis Unit. He then changed direction and began to study how chemotherapy could be used with radiotherapy in treating cancer, beginning with lymphoma. This grew into an integrated group of clinics and services in medical oncology for managing a broad range of tumours.
In parallel with this activity, he built up a strong research oriented academic department of clinical pharmacology. One of the strengths of this department was the firm commitment to clinical responsibility, and the spirit of the department was such that all research projects had a direct relevance to patient care.
He was involved in the authorship of several important textbooks, including the Short Textbook of Medicine, Clinical Pharmacology for Nurses, and the Textbook of Clinical Pharmacology. The internet search engine Pubmed cites 72 papers on which he was an author.
As sub-dean of Guy's Medical School from 1965 to 1977, he was an excellent administrator but always kind and approachable. In this role, everything was accomplished efficiently and quietly in his own unhurried and informal style. It is difficult to understand how all the threads of his career were handled with such success, particularly considering that, during the whole period that he was at Guy's as a physician, he ran a successful general medical firm which was extremely popular with the students and junior medical staff.
Retirement in 1984 proved to be a misnomer, and he continued to teach medical students and to work until this millennium.
John was born in 1920, the oldest child of a close knit family of five. His father was a general practitioner in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. He was educated at Brighton College before entering Guy's Hospital Medical School in 1938.
He was a man of sensitivity, culture, and humour. He had a catholic musical taste, coupled with a fine and discriminating appreciation of music, both as critic and performer. In his younger days he provided material and performed in several Guy's Hospital Residents' Plays. He read widely, and this was reflected in the accuracy and simplicity of his own written style. He was a keen gardener and both a connoisseur and cosmic consumer of apples. In retirement, he studied the pharmacology of viniculture, producing a steady supply of white wine.
His natural informality was only challenged by golf etiquette, to which he was totally loyal. He had an excellent temperament for the game and the natural advantage of a slight draw in the drive. He was once cheered from a Scottish course after completing a round in weather dire enough to send most others to the safety of the 19th hole. He was a dangerous man off a handicap of 15.
He was a devout Christian and served as church sidesman in Sevenoaks and Ightham for many years. From 1950 he was blessed by a long and happy marriage to Ruth, and by three children and five grandchildren, whose achievements gave him great pleasure.
Former professor of clinical pharmacology Guy's Hospital Medical School (b 22 October 1920; q Guy's 1943; MD, FRCP), d 16 April 2007.