In 1970 Aeneas Mackay Fisher was appointed as the first consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist to the then brand new Northwick Park Hospital in north London. He applied his usual zeal and enthusiasm to the task of setting up a new department, and he and the team he built up were rewarded in due course by some of the best perinatal mortality figures in the United Kingdom. Before his move to Northwick Park he had been involved in research on intrauterine growth retardation, research which he continued in his consultant post. He also set about developing fallopian tube surgery for infertility, work for which he was awarded a Cambridge MChir in 1995.
Aeneas Fisher was born in Scotland and was always proud of his Scottish roots, although he grew up in Portsmouth, where he won a scholarship to Portsmouth Grammar School and later a city major scholarship to read medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. After house officer posts at Westminster Hospital, where he completed his clinical studies, and in Portsmouth, he specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology, holding posts in Portsmouth, Westminster, Birmingham, and the professorial unit in Bristol before moving to Northwick Park Hospital. He was a dedicated clinician, and a huge file of “thank you” letters testifies to his devotion to his patients. He was also an inspired teacher and a sought after lecturer. He was a member of the council of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, a medical assessor for the Medical Defence Union, and a visiting examiner at the Universities of Manchester and Colombo.
In his younger years he was an active sportsman, playing soccer and rugby for his school and rugby for the Hampshire Public Schools XV. He was dogged by ill health in his later years. A fractured hip following a fall in hospital after a joint replacement operation proved to be the last straw, and he eventually succumbed to a Clostridium difficile infection. He leaves a wife, Grace, whom he married on the day he qualified; two children; and four grandchildren.
Former consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Northwick Park Hospital, honorary consultant Hammersmith Hospital, honorary senior lecturer Charing Cross Hospital (b 1931; q Cambridge 1957; MA, MD, MChir, FRCOG), d 20 July 2007.