Prof John Fielding, who died on January 16th aged 63, was a world authority in the field of gastroenterology, but he was also a singer, sportsman and a very successful medical politician as founder of the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association.
He passionately advocated the interests of consultants though he himself did not have a private income. In this, he was entirely unafraid of controversy while remaining pleasant and warm on a personal level. Medicine and music were in his blood and he excelled at both.
He was born in Cork on June 22nd, 1938, to John (Jack) and Kitty (née McMullen) Fielding. The atmosphere into which he was born and in which he grew up was very much a medical one. His father was a consultant radiologist at the North Infirmary in Cork.
In those days consultants received no salary and were dependent on their private income alone. Like many other doctors who lived in Patrick's Place and Sidney Place in Cork, Jack Fielding saw patients on the ground floor of his house. To complete the medical picture, his grandfather, James F. McMullen, who had been a prominent architect, had designed the Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital in Cork and the chapel in the South Infirmary Hospital in Cork.
John Fielding was educated at the nearby Christian Brothers College, known as Christians, and there his academic brilliance became obvious. He did his Leaving Certificate examination at 15 and got honours. It would be more than a year before he could go to University College Cork.
There was no such thing as an official transition year at the time so he spent the interval playing golf and poker and generally enjoying himself.
At 17 he went to University College Cork to study medicine. He was consistently first in his class. He was also chairman of the Medical Society in the college and president of the students' union.
After completing second med he took a year off to secure a B.Sc in physiology. He came first in final med and then became first houseman to two of the new professors in St Finbarr's Hospital. From Cork he went to England and worked in hospitals in London, Birmingham and Oxford. He became a member of the Royal College of Physicians.
In Birmingham he met his future wife Judy Pomphrey, who is now in general practice.
When he returned to Ireland in the 1970s to Jervis Street Hospital in Dublin, he was offered an opportunity to become professor of medicine in Birmingham but declined it.
He became professor of medicine at Jervis Street and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, later moving to Beaumont when the new hospital was created out of Jervis Street and the Richmond.
He had a great reputation as a doctor and specialist. He lectured all over the world, including the Mayo Clinic, on gastroenterology and was also a world authority on Crohn's Disease and other inflammatory bowel diseases. He was the doctor whom other doctors all over Ireland liked to consult, such was his reputation.
He was best known to the public, perhaps, as the founder of the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association. The IHCA was formed in 1988 because of his belief that the Irish Medical Organisation was not adequately promoting the interests of consultants. He was a passionate advocate of these interests, though the rules of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland prevented him from enjoying a private income. He was not over-diplomatic in his campaigning on behalf of consultants and had no qualms about walking out of meetings with the VHI and other bodies.
His stroke of genius was to bring in fellow-Corkman Finbarr Fitzpatrick - former general secretary of Fine Gael - as secretary-general of the IHCA. His passion and Fitzpatrick's political abilities made for a perfect combination which helped to make the IHCA the pivotal association it is today with 1,400 members. He was its president from 1989 to 1992. The highlight of his work for the IHCA was securing a negotiating licence in 1990.
He retired from the RCSI in somewhat acrimonious circumstances in the mid-1990s and took up a post at the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin. However, he is remembered with great affection by those who were his students in the RCSI and by members of the nursing profession. He treated them as equals, invited them to his home and held musical evenings for them on numerous occasions.
He was, among many other things, an enthusiastic and accomplished sportsman. In his youth he was a runner and rugby player. He was a swimmer, a scratch golfer, cricketer and, later in his life, an accomplished horseman.
In many ways, though, music was the love of his life, a trait he most likely inherited from his grandfather, Con Fielding, who was a well-known singer in Cork in his day.
John Fielding was founder chairman and president of the musical group in the RCSI who made an LP on which he sang; was closely involved with the Dublin Grand Opera Society and was an excellent opera singer. He went to singing lessons every week for a decade prior to his illness. On the night he was hospitalised last autumn he first went to the Bohemians' Musical Society in his wheelchair, was elected chairman and then went on to the Mater.
In more recent years he lived in Ashford, Co Wicklow.
His is survived by his wife Judy, sons James, Charles and Nicholas, daughters, Caroline and Sarah, his mother Kitty and brother Raymond.
John Fielding: born 1938; died, January 2002