Happy birthday to Newcastle Medical School, which is celebrating 175 years since it admitted its first students. Health Editor Barry Nelson examines its legacy.

IT has been estimated that eight out of ten North-East doctors and dentists trained in the region.

That’s why yesterday’s celebration of the 175th anniversary of Newcastle Medical School will be celebrated in every corner of the North-East.

To mark 175 years of medical teaching in the North-East, leading lights of the modern medical school gathered yesterday to cut a giant birthday cake.

But as well as celebrating the day back in 1834 when the Newcastle upon Tyne School of Medicine and Surgery began offering courses at the Worshipful Company of Barber-Surgeons, the gathering looked forward to a bright future.

The Newcastle Medical School “brand” is now so successful in the UK – the Sunday Times Good University Guide declared the city to be the finest place to study medicine in Britain – that it’s being exported around the world. Recently a branch of Newcastle Medical School opened in Malaysia, the first in what could be a succession of “clones” to offer the same high standard of tuition to would-be doctors in far-flung corners of the world.

Professor Chris Day, the Geordie pro-vice chancellor of Newcastle’s Faculty of Medical Sciences, is immensely proud of the achievements of his home town medical school. He is excited at the branch opening in South-East Asia, but says we must not forget that the priority for Newcastle Medical School is to serve the region.

“Newcastle University began life providing doctors and engineers for the North-East of England. Medicine was the first subject to be taught here.”

Prof Day says the medical school is still probably the best example of a university department serving the immediate area. “About 80 per cent of the doctors and dentists we produce end up working in the North-East,”

he says.

The old days when most doctors were from medical families have gone, says Prof Day, whose father was a local builder. “We have a strong desire to open up the medical school to people from different backgrounds and we have a really active programme which involves going into the local community and encouraging young people to apply to study medicine.”

While this programme has had some success, the professor has some worries that we may go back to the situation where medical education is the preserve of an elite. “The cost of a medical education may have to go up again to pay for the hole in public spending. There is a worry that we may end up having to charge students higher fees.”

From its modest beginnings with only 26 students, Newcastle Medical School has developed into one of the largest in the UK, with about 1,750 students studying medicine at any one time.

From 1851 it was linked to Durham University but, in 1937, it joined up with Armstrong College in Newcastle to become King’s College, Durham. In 1963, King’s College became Newcastle University.

Apart from teaching medicine and treating patients, senior medical staff in Newcastle have built up an international reputation in the field of research.

“By happy chance, the things we have been good at in terms of medical research are the things that are probably the most relevant to the North-East,” says Prof Day.

Among the many areas of excellence in research, Prof Day singles out the study of the ageing process.

“We are probably best known for our research into ageing. We have the oldest population in the country and we also have a huge research institute which focuses on this area.”

He is also particularly proud of the Newcastle cancer institute and research into neurological problems, including brain injury and dementia.

The medical school is also associated with the famous Red Spot study in which scientists have followed the year-by-year health of 1,000 families born on Tyneside in 1947.

“We have learned a great deal from this study. There are bigger ones internationally, but none of them goes as far back as ours.”

According to professor of surgery Tom Lennard, Newcastle Medical School has benefited from the close links between hands-on medicine and surgery and research.

“This has resulted in Newcastle leading the world in terms of developing transplant services in the solid organs, kidneys, hearts, lungs, pancreases and livers,” says Prof Lennard.

“We have benefited from having very close links between the medical school and the doctors doing the cutting, sewing and plumbing. We have an outstanding reputation in the science of transplantation.”

A second area which Prof Lennard singles out is the advances made by Newcastle-based medics in the successful treatment of a wide range of cancers.

“One day, drugs might replace surgery but at the moment 75 per cent of cancers are cured by surgery,”

he adds.

From the Eighties Raise A Laser appeal launched by The Northern Echo – which Prof Lennard credits with enabling Newcastle scientists to “take the lead in cancer research” – to the more recent Sir Bobby Robson appeal to open a cancer trials research centre at the Freeman Hospital, there has never been any problem in raising funds for worthy causes.

“North-East people are remarkably generous,” he says. “We would like to say a big thank you to the people of the region. I think this has benefited the whole population.”