J3066 : Graveyard, St Patrick's, Drumbeg (2) shows the grave of Sir Ian Fraser a distinguished medical consultant. The following obituary will be of interest
“SIR IAN FRASER
DSO, OBE, DL, MD, MCh, FRCS, FRCSI
The son of a doctor, Ian Fraser was born in Belfast on 9 February 1901. He was educated there at the Royal Academical
Institution, and Queen’s University, where he graduated with a first class degree in 1923. Awarded his MCh in 1927 and
his MD in 1932, he took first place in Ireland when he gained the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland
in 1926, becoming FRCS the following year. His extensive postgraduate experience included study at Guy’s and
Middlesex Hospitals in London, the Hôtel Dieu and Hôpital Necker in Paris and the Allgemeines Krankenhaus in Vienna.
He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1939.
In 1938 he was appointed resident surgeon at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, and in 1940 was awarded the OBE for
his work with the St John Ambulance Brigade, having been appointed the first Commissioner of the new St John’s
Northern Ireland District in 1932. However, on the outbreak of war Fraser immediately volunteered for service with the
RAMC and in 1940 was sent to West Africa. Here he was first, as a Lieutenant Colonel, put in charge of a 1,000-bed
hospital and later, as a Brigadier, made consultant surgeon for Gambia, Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast, based in Accra.
With war raging in North Africa, Fraser volunteered to revert to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel to join the Eighth Army.
Before doing so, however, he returned to Britain where he conducted a number of trials of penicillin with Howard Florey,
who had isolated and purified the drug for clinical use after its initial discovery by Alexander Fleming in 1928. In 1941
Fraser was sent to a large hospital in Algiers, but he insisted on going to the battlefield at the earliest opportunity so that
the new drug could be tested as soon as casualties occurred. By conducting these pioneering battlefield trials he was
instrumental in ensuring that penicillin was able to play its vital part in the treatment of the wounded. This was the start of
several intensive years of battlefield experience and experimentation. In July 1943 when the Eighth Army landed in Sicily,
he and his medical team were in the forefront, treating men as soon as they fell. He followed the Eighth Army throughout
the Sicilian campaign and in September 1943 was with British X Corps as part of the US Fifth Army at Salerno. There he
operated on the beach under heavy fire for 24 hours, at the end of which, totally exhausted, he insisted on doing the last
useful thing he could by giving a pint of blood before falling asleep. For his courageous work under fire at Salerno Ian
Fraser was awarded the DSO.
He later contracted diphtheria and was evacuated to Cairo but this was far from being the end of his war. Once
recovered, he returned to England where he was given a special assignment to visit all the hospitals on the East Coast as
part of the preparations for the Normandy invasion. Soon after D-Day he landed at Arromanches where he set up a
1,500-bed hospital, in which emergency operations were carried out using three tables at a time. Once this was
established on a sound footing Fraser returned home, from where he was next sent to India as consultant surgeon at GHQ
Central Command at Agra. He flew out to India with the first consignment of DDT, which had already been used
extensively in the battle against malaria during the Sicilian campaign.
When the war was over Fraser returned to Belfast where, in addition to his work at the Royal Victoria Hospital and the
Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, he was honorary consultant to the Army in Northern Ireland and to the Royal
Ulster Constabulary. He was at various times President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, the Association of
Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland and the British Medical Association.
Knighted in 1963, Ian Fraser was awarded many international honours, including the Ordre de la Couronne of Belgium,
the Order of Orange Nassau of Holland and the Ordre des Palmes Académiques and the Légion d’Honneur of France, of
all of which he was either a Commander or Chevalier.
Fraser married Eleanor Margaret Mitchell in 1931. She died in 1992 and he is survived by a son and a daughter. He died
on 11 May 1999, aged 98.
THIS OBITUARY IS BASED ON A NOTICE THAT APPEARED IN THE TIMES ON 21 MAY 1999”