Margaret Turner-Warwick, doctor and scientist

As an inspiring specialist and the first woman president of the Royal College of Physicians, she encouraged a renewed focus on patient care

‘If they can ensure that their professional integrity in the selfless care of patients is sacrosanct then all will be well for the future of medicine’ (Imperial College London)

Margaret Turner-Warwick was the eminent scientist and doctor who became the first woman to be elected president of the Royal College of Physicians. A specialist in thoracic medicine and respiratory diseases, she authored more than 200 papers on the subject. Speaking of her lifetime’s achievements, she said: “I had no wish to be any kind of feminist pioneer or curiosity. That would have got in the way; gender has no place in medicine.”

Turner-Warwick was born in London in 1924, the third daughter of Maud and William Harvey Moore QC. She studied medicine at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, matriculating in 1943 at a time when very few women were being admitted to the course. During her studies she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent nine months in a sanatorium in Switzerland, returning to sit her final exams.

She began in practice at University College Hospital and at Brompton Hospital, London. And it was while at the Brompton, in 1950, that she took the decision to specialise in thoracic medicine (chest and lungs), the field which would define her career.

In 1972 she was appointed Chair of Medicine at Cardiothoracic Institute (University of London). At this time medical knowledge of the respiratory organs was still focussed on disease. By contrast, Turner-Warwick’s research emphasised the status of the healthy lung. “It was this renaissance of mechanistic enquiry engaging many different investigational approaches that inspired so many of us trainees to enter the specialty,” said her former colleague Professor Stephen Holgate.

Turner-Warwick was elected president of the Royal College of Physicians in 1989, the first woman to take the role in 472 years of its history. She had maintained close contact with her alma mater and was elected to an Honorary Fellowship of Lady Margaret Hall in the same year. Three years later she was appointed Chairman of the Royal Devon and Exeter Health Care NHS Trust. She was honoured with a DBE in 1990.

The care of patients had always been her prime commitment, and her 2005 autobiography, Living Medicine, contains this observation: “If they can ensure that their professional integrity in the selfless care of patients is sacrosanct then all will be well for the future of medicine.

“However, if doctors allow their commitment to patients to be pushed into second place by political or managerial diktats, or more personal factors, then medicine will be at risk of losing its soul.

“In the end, the future of medicine will depend on those who really care for patients.”

She had latterly retired to Devon with her husband, urologist Richard Turner-Warwick. As well as being an inspiration to women in the field, she passed on her love of medicine to her daughter Lynne and granddaughter Tabitha, who have both followed her into the subject.

Dame Frances Lannon, former College Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, had this to say of her: “Margaret Turner-Warwick was a very remarkable woman. She managed the demands of her research work, clinical practice and leadership roles in the medical profession and in policy formation with calmness and without fuss. She cared about patients and doctors and the health service, not about status.”

Margaret Turner-Warwick DBE, born 19 November 1924, died 21 August 2017