Charles George Lambie

Charles George Lambie FRSE MC (1891–1961) was a physician of Scots descent. He was the first doctor in Europe to use insulin in the treatment of diabetes. He came to later fame in the University of Sydney. Short of stature he was affectionately known as Wee Mon by his students.

Life

He was born on 24 July 1891 in Port of Spain in Trinidad the only son of Lt Col George Lambie, commanding officer of the Trinidad Light Infantry Volunteers, and his wife Sophia Agnes Theresa Stollmeyer. As a child he was a gifted musician and gave piano concerts at the age of 8.^[1]

He was sent to Scotland to boarding school and was educated partly at Ayr Academy and partly at Stanley House School in Stirlingshire. He then studied Medicine at Edinburgh University graduating MB ChB in 1914. He was President of the Royal Medical Society 1914-15, one of its youngest presidents. He won the Murchison Memorial Scholarship in 1915.^[2]

His career was immediately disrupted by the First World War during which he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1915 and saw action in Mesopotamia but was invalided out for a year to India where he served as a pathologist in Poona. In 1917 he returned to active service on the Somme, rising to the rank of Captain and winning a Military Cross for bravery in 1918.

After the war he joined Prof Arthur Robertson Cushny in Edinburgh as a Research Assistant. In 1921 he went to the University of Toronto in Canada to work with Profs Frederick Banting and Charles Herbert Best, the creators of insulin. In 1922 he returned to Edinburgh and became the first person in Europe to use insulin in the treatment of diabetes.^[3] He was then Assistant Physician at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on Lauriston Place and had also begun lecturing at Edinburgh University. He was the Beit Memorial Fellow 1923 to 1926.

In 1927 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Alexander Gray McKendrick, George Barger, William Ogilvy Kermack, and William Glen Liston. He received his doctorate (MD) in the same year^[4] and was also awarded a Lister Fellowship.

In 1929 he declined a chair at the University of Aberdeen and instead travelled to Australia to take up the G H Bosch chair as Professor of Surgery at the University of Sydney. Here he worked with his predecessor Prof Harold R Dew to completely reformulate the academic curriculum in the Medical Faculty.^[5]

He became seriously ill in 1940, ironically with diabetes and was also diagnosed with a heart condition.

He retired from the university in 1957 and took up a committee role in the New South Wales branch of the British Medical Association, then under the chairmanship of Sir William Morrow.^[6]

He died of coronary vascular disease on 28 August 1961 at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney. His body was cremated.

Hobbies

Over and above his medical skills, Lambie was a skilled musician, studying composition under Edgar Bainton.

Artistic Recognition

His portrait by Nora Heysen is held by the University of Sydney.

Family

In 1925 he married Eliza Anne Walton (1892-1965). They had two daughters.

Publications

• On the Locus of Insulin Action (1927)
• Clinical Diagnostic Methods (1947); co-written with Jean Armytage
• Light out of France (1951)

References