Cecil Helman, London GP and internationally renowned medical anthropologist and writer has sadly died, on 15 June 2009 at the Royal Free Hospital, from complications of motor neurone disease.
Cecil was born into a medical family in South Africa in 1944 and qualified at the University of Cape Town Medical School in 1967. He left South Africa soon after and came to Britain to take up general practice and study social anthropology at University College London under Professor Mary Douglas.
He continued to work for 27 years as a GP in North London but also pursued a …