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Sir Dugald Baird
PLAQUE048
PLAQUE048

Sir Dugald Baird

PLAQUE048
Dedicatee (Greenock, Scotland, 1899 - 1986)
DescriptionSIR DUGALD BAIRD 1899 - 1986 MEDICAL PIONEER LIVED HERE

HistoryMedical Pioneer. Born in Greenock and a graduate of Glasgow University he was appointed to the chair of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Aberdeen University in 1937. Under his directorship the University's Obstetric Medical Research Unit was set up. He was a principal supporter of the 1967 Abortion Bill.

Further Information:
Sir Dugald Baird was born in Beith, Ayrshire on the 16th November 1899. He was the eldest of three sons and one daughter of David Baird. Dugald Baird was educated at Greenock Academy before going to Glasgow University where he studied science and medicine. He graduated Glasgow University in 1922 with a MB, ChB and went on to achieve a MD with honours and then in 1934 he was awarded the Bellahouston gold medal.

Dugald Baird married May Deans Tennant in 1928. She graduated from Glasgow University and became a Doctor. She was also a very strong supporter of her husband’s objectives. They had two sons and two daughters together.

After graduation he trained as a Doctor at Glasgow’s Royal Maternity Hospital, where he witnessed the social and economic influences on the health of women and their babies. Theses experiences shaped his determination into improving the care for women and their children.

Between 1931 and 1937 he was a Senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow and in 1935 he was elected a fellow of Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Where he was able to introduce the sterilization for many women who had several children and had completed their family. His fight for the fifth freedom – the freedom from the tyranny of excessive fertility continued when he and his family moved to Aberdeen in 1937, where he became the Regius Professor of Midwifery.

Aberdeen became an ideal place for Baird to continue his research into the social and economic factors in obstetrics, due to the stability of the cities population. With the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948, Baird was able to stop working privately and was able to concentrate on his research.

Baird introduced many controversial procedures. He offered the women of Aberdeen the opportunity of a free abortion, encouraged women to be sterilised, if they felt they had completed their family and he also instituted the first screening programme for cervical cancer, that he seen as an avoidable cancer, so long as there were screening processes in place.

In 1955 Baird changed the way in which obstetrics was researched. He was able to persuade the Medical Research Council to support his multidisciplinary approach to improve obstetric care and reproductive performance. He believed that there needed to be a wide area of specialists who could, together, workout the factors affecting reproduction in women. The Obstetric Medical Research Unit was created with Baird as honorary director and a team that consisted of dieticians, sociologists, physiologists, endocrinologists, staticians, and obstetricians.

During his life Dugald Baird received many awards in recognition of his contribution towards improvements of the health of women. He was knighted in 1959, received Honorary Degrees from the University of Glasgow (1959), University of Manchester (1962), University of Aberdeen (1966), University of Wales (1966), University of Newcastle (1974) and the University of Stirling (1974). Baird and his wife were awarded, in 1966, by Aberdeen, the Freedom of the City.

Location Info38, Albyn Place
NotesImage Attribution: watty62, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons