One of the great medical instruments to have been invented in Scotland is the obstetric ultrasound scanner. With this we can see the baby grow in the mother’s womb, and any abnormalities can also be detected. The leading pioneer behind this breakthrough was Sir Ian Donald (1910-1987). Together with his colleague, John MacVicar, and engineer Tom Brown, they developed the first diagnostic applications of ultrasound at the Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital. In 1958 they published an article in the journal, Lancet, revealing to the medical world the first images of a baby in the womb. By the 1960s Ian Donald and James Willocks had improved the machinery and the first public Fetal Ultrasound Scanner was launched, which they called the Diasonograph. As a result, most areas of medicine would be impacted.
Ian Donald was born in Cornwall, of Scottish parents, and attended Warriston School in Moffat and Fettes College in Edinburgh. For a time, the family lived in South Africa, where he graduated at the University of Cape Town in 1927 with a degree in the arts and music. However, it was when he came to live in England that he pursued a career in medicine at the University of London where he practiced at St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School. When World War II broke out, he worked as a medical officer with the Royal Airforce, and received the MBE for his bravery in rescuing some of the aircrew from a crashed bomber which was on fire.
After experience in obstetrics at both St Thomas’ Hospital and Hammersmith Hospital, he was promoted to the position of Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Glasgow (1954-1976). It was here that he became famous for the invention of the obstetric ultrasound scanner. In later years he became the consultant with Nuclear Enterprises in Edinburgh.
The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (March, 2005), highlights “the strongly held Christian faith of the man and how it ruled his culture and attitudes to contraception and abortion and the battles this led him into.” For Professor Donald, the ultrasound scanner gave scientific proof of the baby in the womb in the face of the pro-abortion movement of the 1960s. He became a strongly outspoken champion for the unborn child, often being at the centre of heated opposition. “And when you destroy a baby by abortion that is what you are destroying,” he said. “I think you have got to face the fact honestly…There can be no argument about it and if I have done nothing else in my life, I have killed that dirty lie that the foetus is just a nondescript meaningless jelly, disposable at will, something to be got rid of.” It was a heart-breaking moment for him when the Abortion Act was passed in 1967.
As a staunch Christian in the Scottish Episcopalian Church, he continued to raise his voice on ethical issues of abortion, methods of contraception and euthanasia. It was also through his work that the Queen Mother’s Maternity Hospital was built next to the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow. The record of his scientific medical work and faith, which inspired his ethical concerns, have been preserved by James Willocks and Wallace Barr in their book, Ian Donald: A Memoir. Both men had worked with Ian Donald for about 20 years and knew him well. James Willocks, whom the Herald newspaper states, “had a strong Christian faith”, along with his wife Elma, was keen to make sure Ian Donald’s faith was not sidelined in history.
“Open your mouth for the speechless, in the cause of all who are appointed to die” (Proverbs 31:8, NKJV).
Image: Picture taken of a baby in the womb through an ultrasound scanner. The original uploader was Jeremy Kemp at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons