It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of Ian Muir. He died peacefully in Leicester General Hospital on 6th December 2008, eight days after suffering a catastrophic stroke. News of his death came via an email from his son Colin who told me that he had recently received a copy of an editorial I had written in which I had described his father as a ‘gentle giant’.1 Colin said that he had read this to his father who was ‘quietly very pleased’. Well that news pleased me, but who was Ian Muir and why do I call him a ‘gentle giant’?
Ian Fraser Kerr Muir was born on 26th August 1921 in West Hartlepool, County Durham. He came from a medical background, with his father, grandfather and several uncles being doctors. His mother was a nurse. He went to school at Epson College and entered the Middlesex Hospital Medical School of the University of London in 1939. He graduated in 1943 with an MBBS. From 1944 to 1947 he was a surgeon lieutenant in the RNVR. (See http://www.unithistories.com/officers/RNVR_officersM.html#Muir_IFK) He left the forces to become a house physician at St Andrew's Hospital, Dollis Hill, and then SHO and surgical registrar at the Middlesex Hospital and Central Middlesex Hospital. In 1948 he was awarded the FRCS from the English College. He became a surgical registrar at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham and returned to London in 1951 to become a senior surgical registrar at Mount Vernon Hospital. He was appointed as a consultant plastic surgeon at the same hospital in 1955 and remained there for 14 years. His surgical mentor was Rainsford Mowlem for whom he acknowledged a great debt being taught not only how to do things but perhaps more importantly, how to think about how to do things. During his years at Mount Vernon he was awarded his MS from the University of London in 1960. It was also during this time that, working with Thomas Laird Barday, the Mount Vernon formula for burns resuscitation was born. The colloid-based ‘Muir and Barday’ formula was the most widely used formula in the UK in the last quarter of the twentieth century and is still referred to with fond memories by plastic surgeons who have worked in the British system.
Ian met and married his wife Marion Pinks, a nurse, in 1947 and they had two children: Jennifer who was born in 1950 and Colin who was born in 1952. Marion died in 1965 and Ian was left to bring up this two children whilst engaging in the London style of plastic surgery. Whilst he was born in England, Ian had been brought up to think of himself as Scottish and so it seemed fitting, when the opportunity arose, that he moved to Aberdeen in 1969 to set up the plastic surgery unit there. For almost ten years he was single handed and on-call 24 hours a day. It is indicative of his understanding of the ‘team’ approach to plastic surgery that he wanted the best nurses to work with, so he sat on a committee that overlooked nurse welfare and set up a proper training programme for nurses. His reward was to work with a team of highly trained, very professional and loyal nursing staff.
Whilst I cannot recall the year in which I first saw Mr Muir I can vividly recall the place. It was the busy traffic on the lunchtime stairs in the Medical School at Foresterhill in Aberdeen. I was loudly climbing the stairs with some fellow students when this very distinguished-looking white-haired gentleman drifted by us. With the habitual nosiness of students the question was asked, ‘Who was that’? One of our more connected colleagues informed us that ‘that’ was the plastic surgeon who had renounced London and Harley Street to come and live and work in Aberdeen, there being no further place to go. Such sense and sentiments immediately earned our respect. It was not until later as a senior medical student that I could put a name to the distinguished figure. I was staying in the medical student hostel and our ‘warden’ was Geoff Orr, a surgical registrar. He would regale us with stories of his day and on this particular occasion was ‘blown away’ by his introduction to the world of microsurgery having assisted the surgeon, Mr Muir, on the first day of his attachment in plastic surgery. Plastic surgery was certainly no part of the undergraduate curriculum in those days and it was some years before I met Mr Muir again. This was in 1984 when, as the recipient of an Alan Brooking NHS Travel Fellowship I visited all the burns units in the UK to determine ‘the potential of introducing computerization into clinical practice’. Mr Muir very graciously showed me around the designated unit in Woodend Hospital. During the course of this visit I learned more of his burns background. Whilst in London he had been involved in pressing manufacturers to stop producing children's nightclothes from flammable material. He also made the serendipitous discovery that bacteria do not like dry heat. This ‘discovery’ involved a lady with a serious burn who was not expected to survive. She was ‘made comfortable’ but otherwise no treatment was given. It was a warm sunny day at Mount Vernon and so the windows were opened and the woman's wounds dried up without infection and she survived. I am sure this was the abbreviated version of the story but it led to a new approach to burns care that involved airflow systems in beds and later the whole burns unit. For me that national survey of burn care was a double edged sword. I presented my findings in Groningen, The Netherlands at the first meeting of the European Burns Association. I was not economical with the truth about the then state of British burns care and the result was that I was black-balled by the high and mighty. This led to a period of professional exile in Boston, USA, where I undertook three years of research in the field of wounds and scars. My MD thesis was on the scarless healing found in fetal wounds and as I was presenting myself to my alma mater for examination, Mr Muir was the obvious choice for the internal examiner. He took his responsibility very seriously and I stayed with him for several days in his Deeside house as we went over my first submission line by line. It was a wonderful experience to find a scientist and surgeon combined, but also a person with the imagination and patience to discuss and debate the nature of research and scholarship. This was a precious time for me and I treasure the almost monastic discipline with which Mr Muir approached the task, which did result in an almost complete re-write of my thesis!
Whilst Ian officially retired in 1986 he remained active in research and locum work for many years and developed a programme of research into burns care and wound healing and was a Research Fellow in the Department of Surgery well into his eighth decade. He was the President of BAPS in 1982 and in 1992 delivered the McIndoe Lecture ‘Burns – the Pursuit of Healing’. The cover picture comes from the BAPRAS archives showing the younger but very distinguished Ian Muir.
But when work was over the kettle was put on and another person emerged. Ian Muir was a voracious reader whose depth and breadth of knowledge extended widely, encompassing history, language, philosophy, political theory and, so I am told, all the theories about how to play golf. He was a member of the Royal Aberdeen Golf Club throughout his time in Aberdeen and had a wide circle of friends there. Ian, had a wonderful sense of humour. I was caught on more than one occasion by his teasing. He would dispel the consternation caused by a question from nowhere by a twinkling of his eyes and a chuckle. He was very much a family man and Figure 1 shows him with his grandson and namesake Ian Muir in 1992. Ian spent the last four years of his life in Leicester living with his son Colin and his family.
Ian was an extraordinary and exceptional person. He was a gifted teacher, a prolific writer, but of greater import, a deeply compassionate surgeon. A true inspiration and like many, I feel honoured and blessed to have known him.
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