1914–2018

My father Albert Adeline, passed away recently, just a few weeks short of his 104th birthday. His longevity was a bewilderment to him, but a delight to his family, with great-grandchildren more than 100 years his junior.

Born to become the eldest of three sons, and academically gifted, his medical studies were dramatically truncated after two years when his father died from peritonitis while undergoing surgery. Suddenly there was no money, but a bursary and a benefactor funded a change to the shorter dental course. An unexpected enthusiasm developed, which was in time matched by an enthusiasm for the NHS when it was launched in 1948. He rejected the lure of private practice in favour of providing improved healthcare to those whom it might otherwise have been denied.

As World War II developed he enlisted, barely qualified, and served mostly with the 8th Army in a desert field hospital. Routine dental work was augmented by an intermittent stream of battle casualties, often with major facial trauma. In quieter times he would repair broken spectacle frames in the dental workshop, an invaluable service. With the Allied advancement post-Normandy landings he found himself billeted in provincial Belgium. The daughter of the house became his wife, Josette. He was, I believe, in the first cohort of students to gain a formal surgical qualification in dentistry.

At 41, he developed meningitis. I remember waving at him through the window of his isolation ward. I learned later that he thought this was the last time he would see me as he was not expected to survive.

Survival, though, came with total deafness in one ear and frequent bouts of severe vertigo. In those days dental chairs had a high vertical back, and he would steady himself against it until the nauseous wave passed, while his patient waited in blissful ignorance.

He would have been exposed to much larger doses of gamma radiation than is the norm today. Mercury was another hazard – an early practice of mixing amalgam in the palm of his hand, to bring it up to body temperature before applying it, manifested in the tarnishing of spectacle legs as the mercury was excreted through his hair.

Ever sensitive to his patients' anxieties and well-being, a reputation developed as 'the magic dentist whose patients felt no pain', and people sought him out. In later years he served as Dental Officer at Harefield Hospital, attending to the needs of patients preparing for thoracic surgery.

He retired to the south coast and re-kindled an interest in sailing, but his greatest joy in later life was pottering in his workshop.

He is survived by myself and my family.