Dr Alice Stewart (1906-2002)
in interview with Max Blythe
Oxford, November 1988
MSVA 006

Main subjects discussed: social and occupational medicine, tuberculosis, childhood leukaemias and x-ray practices, cancer incidence and environmental radiation.

Dr Alice Stewart first discusses her family background in S Yorkshire, undergraduate years in Cambridge, clinical training at London's Royal Free Hospital in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and junior appointments. Then follows a review of her transfer to Oxford where initially in the Nuffield Department of Medicine, then in the new Institute of Social Medicine, she developed a career in social medicine where she was to conduct a range of epidemiological surveys and studies. For a time she was reader in social medicine in Oxford where university options eventually closed down on her initiatives, leaving her career to be continued elsewhere. In this section she discusses studies of tuberculosis in the shoe industry and surveys of childhood leukaemia in relation to prevailing obstetric x-ray practices. Finally, turning to more recent research, conducted from a base in the University of Birmingham, she outlines national surveys charting the incidence of cancer against patterns of background radiation, with special reference to an innovative large-scale gridding and averaging of radiation data.

Transcript available