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WHILE there were other eminent medical geneticists in the exciting postwar era when the subject came into its own, Cyril Clarke approached the subject from the clinical point of view. He was a late starter, but in some ways this was rather an advantage. By the time he became actively interested in medical genetics he had sound clinical experience and was therefore able to pick out and select the pressing medical problems which were likely to be responsive to a genetic approach.
His outstanding contribution, for which he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, was his work in helping to solve the problem of one of the more dreaded complications of pregnancy. This was the all too common and all too often fatal condition known as Rhesus haemolytic disease of the newborn, which took a heavy toll of life, killing both unborn and newborn children.
The cause was known, but Clarke and his wife Féo played an outstanding part in showing how it could be prevented by the quite simple procedure of giving an injection of antibody to the mother who might produce a child suffering from this disease. As a result of his work, the incidence fell dramatically and countless thousands of people are alive and well who would either never have been born or who would have died in infancy.
Cyril Astley Clarke was the son of a distinguished Leicester doctor. He was educated at Wyggestson Grammar School in Leicester, Oundle School, and then at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, where he took a second in natural science in 1929. From Cambridge he won a senior science scholarship at Guy’s Hospital.
He qualified in 1932, proceeding to his MD in 1937. He became a member of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1935 and a Fellow in 1949. He served as president of the college from 1972 to 1977. Following his presidency he became director of the Royal College of Physicians’ Research Unit.
Between qualifying and the outbreak of war in 1939 he held various appointments at Guy’s Hospital and in practice in the City. He spent the Second World War in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a medical specialist, mainly in hospital ships and naval hospitals. Later he published some politically unpopular research illustrating the severe vitamin deficiencies suffered by German prisoners of war while in Allied hands.
It was on demobilisation that he severed his association with Guy’s, and — via a medical registrarship at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham — moved to Liverpool in 1946.
He quickly blossomed in Liverpool, ending up as professor of medicine in 1965. He had already been appointed director of the Nuffield Unit of Medical Genetics in 1963, a post he held until 1972 on his appointment to the presidency of the Royal College, but he retained an active association with the unit as a Nuffield research fellow.
He was a free, if not prolific writer, and his publications included Genetics and the Clinician (1962) and Human Genetics and Medicine (1970). He was also editor of the Journal of Medical Genetics for many years.
He held honorary degrees from several British universities, and was an honorary fellow of his old Cambridge college and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. These, and a very extensive list of other medals and lectureships, bore witness to the esteem in which he was held by doctors and scientists alike. He was appointed CBE in 1969 and advanced to KBE in 1974.
His interest in genetics was such that it spread into his hobby of breeding swallowtail butterflies, and his work on the evolution of mimicry in these fascinating creatures was of as high a standard as his studies in human genetics.
He was also an avid small-boat helmsman at West Kirby Sailing Club and the winner of countless trophies, both there and in the Menai Strait regattas.
Superficially he was a retiring figure who, even in his presidential days could be seen slipping quietly about the palatial premises of the Royal College in Regent’s Park as if he wished to avoid recognition — in striking contrast to some of his predecessors. The traditional symbols of office and power had no attraction for him, though he paid tradition full respect.
But he knew his own mind, and behind the quiet exterior was a forceful personality. Tolerant he might be, but if something had to be done and he felt it was justified, then he ensured that it was done. Whether it was hereditary, or acquired in his Liverpudlian days, he had the Lancastrian gift for cutting through red tape.
Sir Cyril Clarke’s wife died in 1998, but their three sons survive him.
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