Frank Dudley Hart

Short abstract

A leading light in rheumatology

In his long life Frank Dudley Hart saw the promotion of rheumatology from a subsection of physical and spa medicine to a recognised specialty.

Figure 1.

During the second world war, while serving as a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Iraq, north Africa, and Italy, he became interested in ankylosing spondylitis, a not uncommon problem in young recruits. Leaving the RAMC with the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1946 he was appointed consultant physician at the Westminster Hospital, where he established the first specialist rheumatology clinic in a London teaching hospital.

Unlike American teaching at the time, Hart differentiated ankylosing spondylitis from rheumatoid arthritis on clinical grounds. He was proved right after the transplant scientist David James asked whether any rheumatic disease “ran in families.” Hart and his colleague Derrick Brewerton nominated ankylosing spondylitis. Tissue typing showed that the inherited human leukocyte antigen HLA B27 was present in over 90% of people with ankylosing spondylitis but only rarely in rheumatoid arthritis.

Hart pioneered the concept of a specialist institute that could support a national rheumatology research effort. This came to fruition as the Kennedy Institute, now affiliated to the Charing Cross Hospital. As chairman of the Royal College of Physicians rheumatism subcommittee he helped to get rheumatology accepted as a specialty of medicine.

After retiring from the NHS in 1974 he continued in private practice until 1987.

He leaves a son and two daughters.

Francis Dudley Hart, former consultant physician London (b 1909; q Edinburgh 1933), d 10 April 2004.