Obituary: James Scott Robson

Professor Robson played a key role in the pre- and post-operative management of the first patients to receive a replacement kidney and co-founded an Edinburgh unit for treatment of acute reversible renal failure.

Born in Hawick in 1921, Prof Robson came to the Capital in 1939 to read medicine and was awarded the coveted Rockefeller Studentship in Havard three years later, sailing to New York to complete his studies. During the voyage, he survived a wartime attack, when his ship was torpedoed off the Canadian coast.

He completed his medical course in the Big Apple and graduated as an MD in 1944 but remained in America for a short period, working in wards and laboratories before being introduced to clinical research. Nearly 30 years later, he returned to Harvard as an honorary associate professor.

On return to Edinburgh, he excelled in his final studies and was awarded the degrees of MB ChB with honours in 1945, and an MD with commendation only 18 months later.

From 1945-48 he served as a captain with the Royal Army Medical Corps in India, Palestine and Egypt.

After he was demobbed, he taught medical students and postgraduate doctors in Edinburgh as well as working in different research fields. One of these was kidney function and studies of patients with disturbances of water and electrolyte balance.

In 1959, he and colleague Hugh Dudley set up a treatment centre of acute reversible renal failure. It led to an immediate reduction in death-rates from the disease – from 100 per cent to 50 per cent – and laid the groundwork for the first successful kidney transplant operation in the UK, performed in 1960 in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

Four years later, Prof Robson and colleagues set up long-term periodic dialysis for patients with irreversible renal failure. A breakout of viral hepatitis in the unit between 1969-71 resulted in a number of deaths among both patients and staff.

Following the outbreak, Prof Robson and two expert advisors devised a code of practice for dialysis units on the back of conclusions drawn by leading bacteriologists. Adherence to these guidelines has resulted in the disappearance of epidemics of viral hepatitis from intermittent dialysis units.

A man of many talents, Prof Robson contributed chapters to Sir Stanley Davidson's famous textbook Principles of Practice of Medicine and, alongside Dr Reg Passmore, became editor-in-chief of A Companion to Medical Studies. He also wrote for The New Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The physician was then appointed chair of medicine in Edinburgh in 1977 and played a prominent role in the revision and modernisation of the Edinburgh University undergraduate medical curriculum. From 1977 to 1980 he was also president of the Renal Association (London).

Prof Robson died quietly at home. He had been suffering cerebral lesions.

"He was a good man who lived to an old age but could not take it any longer," said his wife, Dr Mary MacDonald, a pathologists with whom he established Edinburgh's renal biopsy service.

He is survived by his wife and two sons.