Tribute
Hopkins In a tribute to
the late Sidney
John Hopkins (PJ, 7 May, p566),
D. B. McHUTCHISON and ELLIS BROCK write:
It was sad to learn of the death,
at the great age of 98, of Sidney John Hopkins, former group chief pharmacist
to the United Cambridge Hospitals.
Sidney, or “Mr Hopkins”, as he was always known to his staff in those
far off formal times, was a doyen of pharmacy in the 1950s and ’60s. He
played his part locally on the Society’s branch committee and nationally
as a founder member of the Association of Teaching Hospital Pharmacists.
He held strong views on the position of pharmacy in the hospital service and
the important role that pharmacists should play. Known to the consultant medical
staff at Addenbrooke’s simply as “the pharmacist”, he was frequently
called upon to advise them on the selection of appropriate therapies and dosage,
a role that could be considered as part of the foundation of clinical pharmacy.
The more unusual queries were sometimes tossed to the staff as “today’s
catch question”, but he invariably had the answer first. He came to retirement
at the time of the Noel Hall report and the subsequent NHS reorganisation, about
which it is fair to say he was sceptical.
After registering in 1930, Sidney worked initially at the Middlesex Hospital,
moving to Addenbrooke’s as chief pharmacist in 1946 before the inception
of the NHS. With the formation of the NHS teaching hospital group, he became
group chief pharmacist. One of his early innovations was the building of a state-of-the-art
sterile products unit, which was still in use when he retired in 1972.
In his final years at Addenbrooke’s he was closely involved in the development
and transfer of the hospital from the city centre to its new site at Hills Road.
He often clashed with the architects over their conservative design concept and
their failure to grasp his forward-looking ideas for flexible design to allow
for future developments in pharmacy practice. He retired only a matter of months
before the new main central pharmacy was commissioned. It had lots of space but
was still without the flexibility he wanted.
His career thus spanned a period of immense change from the early 1930s — when,
in his own words, “apart from the scheduled poisons few of the products
we handled could do the patient much good or harm” — through the
development of antibiotics to the rapid therapeutic expansion into the 1970s
of, for example, immunosuppressive and cytotoxic drugs.
Those of us who worked with him will remember him as a man of powerful personality,
short of stature, dapper and always immaculately dressed. He was a pharmacist
with exacting professional standards, which he expected all his staff to follow.
At a time when handwritten labels were still the norm, his neat script, always
using a fountain pen, was difficult to match.
He did not tolerate fools gladly, but when speaking his mind he was always polite.
He abhorred bad manners or rudeness and his view was always that “politeness
costs nothing” — an example of his fondness for quotations.
After his retirement he continued to keep abreast of developments, particularly
in therapeutics. He was often to be seen visiting the Cambridge University medical
library to research the current literature for his writing.
He will be remembered by many for his books, ‘Principal drugs: an alphabetical
guide to modern therapeutic agents’ (1958) and ‘Drugs and pharmacology
for nurses’ (1963), both of which grew out of his teaching at the Addenbrooke’s
School of Nursing. Both continued through many editions long after his retirement
in 1972 and both are still in print. He was into his 90s when he prepared his
last revised edition, and all were produced on his trusty typewriter. The suggestion
that he might consider using a word processor was greeted with much amusement.
Beside the books he was an accomplished writer of articles and book reviews.
Sidney tended to keep his professional and private lives separate. He was happily
married to Elizabeth, who sadly died in 2003, a few weeks short of their 70th
wedding anniversary. His son and daughter freely recognise that he was something
of a Victorian father figure, always busy, occupied with matters of pharmacy
as well as with his love of writing, poetry, literature and music.
He was a Freemason, holding office in his lodges both in London and later in
Cambridge, where he was also for some years Addenbrooke’s Hospital’s
representative at the Cambridge Rotary Club. For some years he practised beekeeping,
extracting and packing honey and preparing beeswax creams — the old pharmacy
tincture press being called into service for some of the processing.
He shared a love of gardening with his wife, until back problems forced him to
give this up. Although their town house had no garden, visitors were greeted
by Elizabeth’s colourful displays in the many containers in the courtyard.
After his retirement, much of his social life revolved around his church.
In one of the Addenbrooke’s Christmas revues in the 1960s Sidney was referred
to in a sketch as “Gentleman Hopkins the Apothecary”. In many ways
this neatly sums him up — a man from earlier times, a pharmacist of the
classical school and a gentleman.
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal