Bryan Nicholson Brooke

The son of numismatist George C. Brooke, after education at Bradfield College, he matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1936. After clinical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital, he qualified MRCS in 1939 and graduated MB BChir in 1940 and MChir in 1944 from the University of Cambridge. He was elected FRCS in 1942 and was chief surgical assistant at St Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1944 he joined the RAMC and served as a lieutenant colonel in charge of a surgical division.[3]

After demobilisation, Brooke spent a year as a senior lecturer in Aberdeen. He joined in 1947[4] the new professorial surgical unit headed by Alan Stammers at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham.[5] There, Lionel Hardy, (William) Trevor Cooke, and Clifford Hawkins were keenly interested in testing the newly introduced adherent Koening-Rutzen bag for potential ileostomy patients.[3]

The Birmingham group and a few like minded colleagues were able to show that an ileostomy using the adherent device, combined with staged colectomy and subsequently proctocolectomy, produced outstandingly successful results. Brooke also devised a simple eversion ileostomy, later adopted world wide. His awareness of the problems encountered by his patients led him to found the Ileostomy Association in 1956 and he was the first president.[5]

He received the higher MD from the University of Birmingham in 1954.[3] He was appointed in 1963 the first professor of surgery at St George's Hospital[5] and held that post until 1976.[4]

... his international reputation flourished and he was in steady demand to participate in international meetings and as a visiting professor, especially in America and Australia, where he was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1977. ... He published several textbooks and numerous articles: his style and use of language were elegant and apposite.[3]

Outside medicine Brooke was a skilled potter, an able painter, and a craftsman carpenter. He designed the altar rails for the local church where his funeral was held. He leaves a wife, Naomi; three daughters; and his companion, Diana, who nursed him throughout his final illness.[5]