Professor of General Practice, born 3 April 1922, died 16 December 2010
Among the festive debris on our kitchen table at the end of last year, were two letters lying, by chance, alongside one another. One was from my aged mum, an avid reader of the Herald obituary column, enclosing an obituary of Professor Ian Richardson, professor of general practice in Aberdeen, and one was from the widow of Gibbie Abercrombie, the Auckland GP with whom I had done my GP student attachment.
As a student in Aberdeen in the early 70s, I had approached Professor Richardson to explore possibilities for doing an attachment in New Zealand. He was encouraging and kind and, rather than, as I had imagined, querying why I wanted to leave …