Happy Birthday Dr Hewan Dewar

It is a great pleasure for the Society to salute our second oldest member, Dr Hewan Dewar of Newcastle who is now 96 years of age.  Dr Dewar graduated from Newcastle medical school and became house physician to Sir William Hume who was a founder member in 1922 of the Cardiac Club. In 1947 he became consultant cardiologist to the Royal Victoria Infirmary Newcastle and has written a very useful book,  The History of Newcastle Cardiology.    He was chairman, after Hume, of the Newcastle Cardiac Club. For many years he was also chairman and then president of the northern branch of the Association of Physicians where he vigorously promoted a duty to make contributions at its meetings, and he upheld high standards in the clinical and scientific contributions of both fellow consultants and juniors.

Hewan Dewar was a pioneer of thrombolysis in acute myocardial infarction using intravenous streptokinase as early as 1961 and in 1977, with his senior registrar Roger Smith as the catheteriser, six patients were treated with intra coronary artery injections of the drug with some short term success.

In the late 1960's he organised a trial of coronary prevention using clofibrate which showed a favourable trend but the study was too small to be definitive  Even after his retirement he pursued studies in prevention which was his passion.

Hewan has been a good supporter of our Society to which he was elected in 1950, being chairman in 1974. He was a regular attendee at our annual meetings even in his late 80's - still taking a keen interest in the presentations.

We greet our distinguished member as he approaches his 97^th birthday on March 29 2010 and send him our warm thanks for all that he has done for British Cardiology and for the British Cardiovascular Society. 

Arthur Hollman       
BCS Archivist 

and

Roger Smith