Bulletin Number Five 1986

Department of Clinical Pharmacology Professor's Profile Professor D.M. Davies Professor of Clinical Pharmacology Professor David Margerison Davies began his medical education at The London Hospital Medical College, University of London, during the 193945 war, but his undergraduate studies were interrupted by service in the Royal Air Force and the Army, and he qualified in 1949. He then worked at The London Hospital as orthopaedic house surgeon and senior accident officer to Sir Reginald Watson-Jones and Sir Henry Osmond- Clarke, and as house physician to Sir Horace Evans and Dr. Wallace Brigden (under the guidance of their First Assistant, John Vallance-Owen). At this time, the unpleasant and dangerous effects on two of his patients of hexamethonium bromide — the first ganglion-blocker to be used clinically for hypertension —engendered what were to become his major interests -adverse drug reactions and safer systems of drug administration; while a study of the neurological effects of profound insulin-induced hypoglycaemia, then used in the treatment of schizophrenia, stimulated a third interest — in the physical signs present in drug poisoning of all types. After a period spent in full-time journalism: first medical, at the Lancet, and then non-medical, he returned to hospital medicine and worked in London as, successively, medical registrar at the Bolingbroke Hospital, and medical tutor, registrar, senior registrar, and Receiving Room (Casualty) Physician at The London Hospital. In 1962, he was appointed Consultant Physician at Shotley Bridge Hospital and other hospitals in the North West Durham Group, and, later, Lecturer in Pharmacology and Postgraduate Clinical Tutor, at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ； Clinical Pharmacologist to the Northern Regional Hospital Board; and Honorary Consultant Physician to the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he took charge of its Poisons Information Service. He set up at Shotley Bridge an adverse drug research unit (with the assistance of the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust), a clinical pharmacology unit and one of the first drug information services in the United Kingdom. In 1972, he became Senior Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacology and Clinical Toxicology at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Honorary Consultant Physician to another of the Newcastle University hospitals, Freeman Hospital, while continuing to run his unit at Shotley Bridge General Hospital. In 1979, Professor Davies was appointed Director of the Northern Regional Clinical Pharmacology Unit, the only national health service unit of its kind. Throughout his career, Professor Davies has maintained keen literary interests: while a registrar he was joint-author of a small textbook on anti- bacterial therapy, and author of an account of modem medicine for the lay public and a guide for students on medicine as a career. He later produced, as Editor and part-author, the Textbook of Adverse Drug Reactions, now in its third edition, and edited or contributed chapters to several works on therapeutics and clinical toxicology. In 1966, he founded the Adverse DrugReaction Bulletin ， which is distributed to all prescribing doctors and senior medical students in the United Kingdom and which has a very large international circulation, with editions in four languages — English, Italian, French, and Spanish — and further ones in the offing. He is also Clinical Editor of an international review journal, Adverse Drug Reactions and Acute Poisoning Reviews. In 1968 ， he joined the Committee on Safety of Drugs (later Medicines) and served on its Subcommittees for eighteen years, until coming to Hong Kong in 1986. He also established one of the three regional centres in the United Kingdom which collect adverse drug reaction reports on behalf of the Committee on Safety of Medicines. In 1972, he was an RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 15