Dr Chalmers Davidson

Chalmers Hunter Davidson, physician: born Falkirk, Stirlingshire 15 October 1915; married 1960 Ursula Constable Maxwell; died Beauly, Inverness-shire 5 August 2001.

As a doctor, Chalmers Davidson's first step to a diagnosis was to discuss with his patients what their taste in literature was, an approach which he recommended to younger colleagues.

He was born in Falkirk in 1915, one of six children in a family descended from Dr Thomas Chalmers, who in 1843 led the Disruption of the Church of Scotland. His education at Falkirk High School was augmented by the local minister, the Rev J.F. Dean, who gave Davidson a deep and lasting love of the classics, literature and golf.

At great sacrifice to his family he went on to read Medicine at Edinburgh University. After graduation in 1938, he worked as a house surgeon in Southampton and as a resident house officer in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, a post for which no salary was paid. There he would watch some of the leading surgeons of the day, such as Sir John Fraser and Sir David Wilkie, arrive at work each morning by Rolls-Royce, to be greeted like royalty.

Davidson joined the RAMC in 1940 and served in Oxford, the Middle East and India. He entertained his family during the Second World War with a stream of letters, many written on extravagantly printed writing paper from captured Italian officers. In Egypt and North Africa, the Army had a serious problem with venereal disease among soldiers, and Davidson was sent to Syria by General (later Field Marshal Lord) Wavell on a three-month assignment to study the French system of military brothels. On Davidson's return, Wavell invited him to present his favourable report over dinner. Wavell was impressed, but Lady Wavell rejected the whole idea and so the VD casualty rate continued to grow.

Perhaps this experience prevented Davidson from rising further than the rank of captain, and later his love of the arts prevented him from having a more glittering career in medicine – he never did own a Rolls-Royce – but he dined out on his experiences for the rest of his life.

After war service he returned to his beloved Edinburgh. He combined his love of books with his love of his profession by becoming the Honorary Librarian of the Royal College of Physicians (of which he became a Fellow in 1955), where, over his many years in that office, he considerably improved the collection.

In Edinburgh Davidson's bachelor life in the post-war years was based on the city's pubs and clubs. The Café Royal, Milne's Bar and, particularly, the Scottish Arts Club were like second homes to him and he made lasting friendships with artists, writers and poets. Norman MacCaig, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sydney Goodsir Smith and Robert Kemp were friends and often patients as well.

Davidson and the broadcaster Moray Maclaren shared an interesting experience with Gilbert Harding, who on one occasion found himself naked in the North British Hotel, having been robbed of all his clothes and possessions an hour before he was due to make a live broadcast from BBC Scotland. Davidson stepped in to the rescue and Harding appeared immaculately dressed and on time.

Sir Compton Mackenzie became a friend and it was through him that Davidson met Ursula Constable Maxwell, whom he married in 1960, so vastly increasing his circle of relations, friends and acquaintances. The couple's honeymoon was spent visiting Ursula's numerous cousins (all of whom seemed to be ambassadors) in various countries.

Davidson's medical career continued with consultancy posts at Leith and Chalmers hospitals, and he and two colleagues published an important paper on a rare complication of heart attacks, "Post- Myocardial Infarction Syndrome of Pericarditis", in the BMJ in 1961.

Much of Davidson's life was taken up with bibliophilia – or bibliomania – together with golf, which he played at Bruntisfield, Luffness and at Muirfield, from where he finally resigned in order to spend the subscription more profitably, as he thought, on the purchase of rhododendrons. When the Davidsons retired to Ursula's family home, Farlie House, at Beauly, in Inverness-shire, in 1971 he created a collection of species rhododendrons, and set up a printing press and an extraordinarily hospitable household.

In later life Davidson was afflicted by glaucoma and latterly Parkinson's disease, cruel blows to a gardener, painter and book collector. He bore these without complaint. He started a correspondence with Sir David Steel on the subject of second-hand false teeth and another with Radio 4's Sue MacGregor about her father, who had been a contemporary of his at Edinburgh University.

Ronnie Finlayson