THE PHYSICIAN’S PHYSICIAN
Born Godfrey Heath Fowler in the Worcestershire village of Wolverley, he was the eldest child of six.
Godfrey’s father, Donald, was a businessman, and his mother, Dorothy Bealey, was a homemaker.
Both parents had been forced to leave school aged fourteen, so they encouraged their children to achieve in their education.
Godfrey was sent to Sebright, a minor public school.
Whilst there, Godfrey refused to join the school’s army cadets. The headmaster insisted he use his spare time to work on ‘Something challenging’.
He chose to study Gibbon’s ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’, in great depth.
This was Godfret stand him in good stead, a few years later, as whilst taking the Oxford University entrance exam, there was a whole section of questions on the Gibbons book.
Godfrey was successful and won a scholarship to Oxford University to study medicine. He was the first member of his family to go to university.
Godfrey found his first year at the university socially challenging, so he joined the rock-climbing club. They climbed all the university buildings – including the notorious ‘Radcliffe Overhang’.
At Oxford, Godfrey befriended another medical student who was in his year, named Roger Bannister.
Godfrey was present at the Iffley Road stadium in 1954, when his friend became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes.
After leaving college, Godfrey was given a junior post at University College Hospital in London, where he specialised in gynaecology, obstetrics and paediatrics.
However, what he really wanted to do was become a GP (General Practitioner), something he finally achieved in 1959.
Two years later, Godfrey moved to Oxford to become a GP based in Beaumont Street.
That same year, he married Sissel Vidnes, who was ten years younger than him. They were to have two sons, Jeremy and Adrian. Sissel was a yoga teacher.
Amongst Godfrey’s patients were the writer C.S. Lewis and Sir Howard Florey, the Nobel prize winning bacteriologist and doctor who rediscovered penicillin.
Godfrey’s reputation was such that he was invited to become the doctor at Queen’s College, Oxford. He agreed – on the condition that he could also continue as a GP in the city. From then on, Godfrey fulfilled both roles. He eventually became the doctor for other Oxford University colleges.
One of Godfrey’s proudest achievements was introducing counselling to the university, believing that mental health was a crucial part of student well-being.
Godfrey was extremely popular, regarded as kind, warm and caring. He seemed to get along with everybody.
Godfrey became increasingly involved in research, having a particular interest in preventative medicine.
His first task was a study into whether ‘stop smoking’ adverts made any difference to people’s habits. The findings were so significant that Godfrey was encouraged to create a medical research unit.
He worked on projects including cardiovascular disease, encouraging healthy eating, identifying causes of cancer and persuading smokers to give up cigarettes. Godfrey also focussed on the care of newly diagnosed cancer patients.
From 1978, Godfrey became a clinical reader – heading a department of medical general practice at the university, which trained students, whilst still engaging in research. He was recommended for this position by Sir Richard Doll, Regius Professor of Medicine.
Godfrey introduced general practice teaching, which included skills on how to consult patients and how to liaise with hospital staff. He set a target of placing seventy students a year with Oxford GP practices – something he always managed to achieve.
Many of the students lived with Godfrey and Sissel whilst they undertook their training.
His department is now known as the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Sciences.
Godfrey also became professorial fellow at Balliol College and a fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners. He was also honorary director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund’s GP group.
In recognition of his many achievements, Godfrey was awarded an OBE.
Then tragedy struck the family.
Sissel and Godfrey’s younger son, Adrian (29), who was an ecologist, was going for a job interview as a senior government official in Scotland, when he fell from a train leaving Oxford Station and was seriously injured. The story made the national headlines.
There was some doubt as to what had happened. A few witnesses said Adrian was late and tried to board an already moving train. Others said he was already aboard and the door locking mechanism failed.
Adrian fell to the platform, injuring his head.
A few days later, Godfrey and Sissel gave permission for Adrian’s life support system to be switched off.
Thames Trains held an inquiry behind closed doors and refused to tell the Fowlers the outcome.
Sissel said, “We find it extraordinary that our son can be killed in a public place, it is investigated, and the report is not available to us.”
The family invoked the new Freedom of Information Act, although it took ten years before they finally saw the report.
Godfrey said, “Having been a practising doctor for forty years, I know how important it is for people to know how a loved one died – otherwise there is a sense of incompletion.”
Godfrey visited Oxford Station and conducted his own enquiries. He noted how many near accidents there were and his pressure on the Government led to an improvement in railway safety in Britain.
After that, Sissel and Godfrey never went to Oxford Station again.
There was never any clear resolution as to what had happened to Adrian, although the inquest suggested he had jumped onto a running board only to find the doors had been locked centrally.
Soon afterwards, Godfrey was made a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.
He wrote two books on general practice, both published by the Oxford University Press.
Godfrey retired in 1997. He had worked for the same GP practice for forty years.
By now, he was also the chief doctor for six different Oxford colleges.
He joined Sir Roger Bannister’s walking group for Oxford academics and used to joke that he could go faster than the famous athlete.
Godfrey so enjoyed walking that he went on extended this to do fell walking and completed the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal and the Tour de Mont Blanc.
He was a keen gardener and kept up an active social life within his two main Oxford Colleges, University College and Balliol.
When Godfrey died, he had been married to Sissel for sixty-one years.
His successor at the Nuffield, Richard Hobbs said he was a convivial and entertaining man. He was, “An unassuming but enjoyable lunch partner.” Hobbs added, “Although Godfrey lived ninety full years, the world is a quieter place without him.”
There have been countless tributes to Godfrey – many from ex-students, all of which praise him for the great academic legacy he left, particularly in the fields of smoking cessation and health behaviour.
RIP – Research Into Preventative (Medicine)
