Published from 1937 to 1965. Run by an independent company from 1938 as “a forum for expression of all forms of progressive thought within the medical profession”.
Edited by Dr David Stark Murray
1960 Drugs and the Health Service
June 1940 Problems of the Post War Practitioner Charles Wortham Brook
November 1937 Vital Foods are Too Dear
October 1937 Happiness in the Hospital Iris Brook, Air Raid precautions, Course of the Malnutrition Controversy F Le Gros Clark
Yesterday and Today: David Stark Murray
After 33 years of editing Socialism and Health, David Stark Murray is handing over to new editors. It was in October 1937 that he started the monthly journal which for many years bore the title Medicine Today and Tomorrow. He was its major contributor and his editorial “Straws in the Wind” were always of a consistently high standard of comment on current medico-political matters.
David’s wide knowledge of all aspects of socialised medicine and his ability to produce the relevant facts and figures have been of incalculable value in the fight to achieve and maintain a national health service. During the discussions following the publication of the National Health Service Bill, from 1946 to 48, he lectured all over the country and wrote innumerable articles—:a sustained effort which in these quieter times seems hardly credible.
Since his student days he has been an active socialist and rationalist. He founded the University Socialist Club in Glasgow and was its first secretary and the editor of its magazine The Lord Rector.
A founder member of the SMA, he succeeded Somerville Hastings as President in 1951. This position he relinquished this year to the great regret of SMA members. He qualified MBChB Glasgow in 1925 and in 1927 became pathologist to the Lambeth Board of Guardians. Moving to Kingston Hospital, he later became group pathologist, building up a modern laboratory and pioneering the development of the Central Sterile Supply organisation.
He was a member of the South-West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board at the start of the NHS, a Governor of St. George’s Hospital and a member of the Kingston hospital management committee for many years.
After he retired in 1965 he made a six-month tour of India, as the first holder of the Aneurin Bevan Fellowship, travelling through the country, studying its medical needs, and lecturing on the organisation of the health services.
His impressions resulted in his book, “India —Which Century?”. A NATO scholarship led to an extensive tour of Europe and the USA, lecturing, broadcasting and discussing with hundreds of people the organisation of the health services.
His books include “Health for AH”, “The Future of Health”, “The Anatomy of Man and Other Animals”, “Your Body”, and “The Search for Health”. He was a director of the Rationalist Press Association for several years.
This list of some of the things David has done reads like a -catalogue and gives no impression of him as a person, of his consistent work for his ideals, nor of the importance of Jean, his wife, in his life and work. Only those of us who have been their close friends over the years have some idea of their contribution to the cause of socialism.
L.T.H. and D.E.B.