Date of birth: 25/03/1887

Date of death: 05/07/1982

Wikipedia

BIOGRAPHY

Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes, to give him his full name and title, was a surgeon who did medical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, but it was cut short by the outbreak of the first world war, when he served as a regimental medical officer and pioneered a new blood transfusion technique that saved the lives of many soldiers. He published the first text book on blood transfusion in 1922.

Keynes came away from the Great War with an aversion to unnecessary mutilation, and he was asked to look at treating breast cancer with radium, the form of radiotherapy then available, which was a good fit for his interests. It was to lead him to treat both operable and inoperable tumours with local radium needles, alone and evolving into adding local surgery or a simple mastectomy. He showed that limited surgical excision together with radiation achieved the same results as classical Halsted radical mastectomy. His work opened the way for others to undertake limited, breast-conserving surgery.

This is to understate his influence – he was ahead of time, and as Gerald Kutcher writes: "In most medical historical accounts, he is viewed as a visionary surgeon pointing to the future. For example, Baron Lerner in The Breast Cancer Wars situates Keynes with other critics 'presaging a debate [over the radical mastectomy] that would erupt in the 1950s', while James Olson in Bathsheba's Breast argues that Bernard Fisher's late 20th century clinical trials proved that 'Halsted was wrong' and 'Keynes was right'."

Keynes became increasingly vociferous in his opposition to radical mastectomy and mutilation. "No one can deny that radical surgery often entails, in addition to appreciable operative mortality, a really hideous mutilation," he said. Further as Kutcher notes, Keynes argued that breast surgeons were guilty of arrogance and insensitivity and that with his radium approach he was aiming no less than to eliminate what he saw as surgical malpractice.

But again, his research was cut short, this time by the second world war, in which he achieved the rank of acting air vice-marshal in the Air Force Medical Service.

Before retiring in 1951, Keynes achieved another surgical breakthrough, undertaking thymectomy (removal of the thymus gland) for the previously incurable myasthenia gravis. In addition to his post at Bart's, he held positions at Mount Vernon Hospital, the Radium Institute, the LCC Thyroid Clinic and the City of London Truss Society. He went on to wok in private practice.

Keynes, who had a more famous brother in the economist John Maynard Keynes, was also a leading authority on the literary and artistic works of William Blake and wrote biographies of authors including Thomas Browne, John Evelyn, Siegfried Sassoon, John Donne and Jane Austen.

In 1981 he published his autobiography The Gates of Memory (review here), recalling his medical and literary life.