Obituary: Lindsay Davidson MD - Wise and energetic Scottish physician who treated the Queen and Idi Amin

Born: 18 June, 1926, in Edinburgh. Died: 1 November, 2011, in Wales, aged 85

LINDSAY Davidson was a physician who enjoyed a truly global reputation in a career that spanned four continents and almost 100 countries.

He led medical faculties in Australia and what was then Rhodesia, lectured from New York to Delhi and New South Wales and treated patients from Idi Amin to the Queen.

Throughout it all he was generous, gentlemanly and charming. A man for whom the phrase “phone a friend” could have been coined, he was endlessly happy to oblige, responding to any requests for help by simply opening up his address book and contacting the appropriate medical friend anywhere in the world.

He prolonged lives with those phone calls – just as efficiently as he used his own expertise – as the voice on the other end invariably responded: “No problem Lindsay, I’ll sort it.”

It was the kind of reaction he engendered wherever he went. So persuasive and courteous was he that everyone from ward sisters and shop assistants to mechanics and garden centre managers would go the extra mile.

And, latterly, when he found the roles reversed, he evolved into the perfect patient – charming to the ward team and immaculately turned out, sporting a handkerchief in his top pyjama pocket.

Born in Edinburgh’s Northfield Circus, he was educated at George Watson’s College where he was known, both there and later at Edinburgh University, as Tank Davidson.

A passionate Scot and ardent rugby fan who was capped for Scotland – albeit against Uganda – he was described by one friend as being built for strength, not speed.

A top pupil throughout school, he embarked on his studies in medicine in 1943 and, after graduating MB ChB, was one of the first intake on the first day of the NHS in 1948.

It was the first of many firsts throughout his distinguished career: in 1962 he was the first Scotsman to receive the Rockefeller Travel Grant, which took him to the department of medicine at New York’s Colombia University.

He was also the first Dean of the faculty of medicine at the University College of Rhodesia and, during the 1970s, he co-ordinated the first intake of patients at Cardiff’s University of Wales.

His career began with posts as house physician at Edinburgh’s Church of Scotland Deaconess Hospital and house surgeon at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary before being called up for national service in 1949.

He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and saw active service in Kenya and Uganda, where he treated Idi Amin, the Ugandan army captain who had yet to become the despot. Davidson also served in the Territorial Army, as a medical specialist, for a further six years.

Returning to civvy street in October 1951, he worked in West Hartlepool and Durham before taking a post as medical registrar at the Royal Infirmary, Dundee. In 1954 he went south again, this time as a Luccock research fellow at the department of medicine, King’s College, University of Durham.

From there he went to the University of Birmingham and the United Birmingham Hospitals, where he became a lecturer in medicine. It was a move that paved the way for his career in Rhodesia. By this time he had built up an expertise in cardiopulmonary physiology, gained a doctorate from Birmingham and become a visiting associate in medicine in the cardiopulmonary laboratory of New York’s Columbia University.