The recent death of Dermot Holland signalled the end of an era. He was one of a few enterprising young doctors specialising in pathology who introduced a modern version of this branch of medicine in Ireland. This included micro and biochemical pathology and the new special feature of oncology, all of which formed a template for a whole new generation in this faculty.
After the second World War there was an exodus of aspiring young medical graduates from various Irish medical schools to the UK and the US ambitious to learn new approaches to this relatively underdeveloped specialty that had lain dormant during the war period. Dermot Holland was one of the group who went firstly to the post-graduate School of Medicine at Hammersmith in London, and the following year to the famed Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. Later, when he obtained a WHO scholarship, he visited many centres of excellence in the United States.
Peter Dermot Joseph Holland was born in Glasnevin in 1915. After secondary level education at O'Connell's school, he graduated as a pharmacist, but after a couple of years, he decided he would like to be a doctor.
In 1940, he enrolled in the Royal College of Surgeons. After graduation in 1945, he served as house surgeon to Mr A.B. Clery and house physician to Dr Alan Thompson at the Richmond Hospital. He decided to specialise in pathology and was appointed as a demonstrator at RCSI and assistant to Prof Matt O'Connor.
His career blossomed in 1951, when he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, a research pathologist to the Medical Research Council of Ireland for its national tuberculosis survey, and a lecturer in pathology. This was followed by his appointment in 1963 as professor of that faculty at the College of Surgeons, an appointment he held until his retirement in 1980.
His initial consultant appointment was to Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, where he served from 1957 to 1968, and while he was there he pioneered the development of paediatric pathology. He then transferred as a consultant pathologist to his alma mater at the Richmond Hospital.
While in this post, he became a fellow of the recently founded Royal College of Pathology, dean at the Royal College of Surgeons, and in 1980, achieved the highest honour and accolade of his illustrious career when he was appointed president of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.
He was conferred with further fellowship honours by the Royal College in Edinburgh, the American College of Pathology, the faculty in Singapore, and the faculty of pathology in Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. After his retirement in 1980, he became Professor Emeritus in Pathology at the RCSI for three years. He was also a member of many prestigious societies in the UK and Europe.During his career, he was author and joint author of 37 scientific papers, and wrote chapters on various types of inflammation in three important books. His prescience was apparent as early as 1958 when he wrote a paper on "the investigation of a ward outbreak of staphylococcus pyogenes infection". In 1962, he published "some aspects of the control of hospital cross infection", and in 1965, "a study of nasal staphylococcus carriage in hospitalised patients". These three important papers were a foresight and forecast of the recent onset of the virulent counterpart of this potential killer organism, MRSA.
As a lecturer and teacher, he had the unique ability to change the tempo of his delivery depending on his audience and on the occasions when I eavesdropped on some of his lectures in which he waxed eloquently and displayed his puckish sense of humour, I heard some of his bon mots. "It's not tee bee, it's tuberculOSIS. And another of many: "The physician knows everything, but does nothing, the surgeon knows nothing, but does everything, while the pathologist knows everything - too late".
Dermot Holland was a perfectionist, a professional, and pragmatist, and could be very critical of any breaches of the high standards that he upheld. He was a natty dresser with a unique sense of brevity of wit.
He enjoyed his golf, and he won the captain's prize at Milltown Golf Club in 1971, and 1973 without using woods, and thus in club circles, he was known as "the iron man". He was an avid gardener, an expert pianist, with a deep interest in music, and particularly, was a devotee of Chopin's nocturnes, which he often played.
Dermot Holland was a great family man. After his devoted and loving wife Pat died in the early 1990s, he had a great camaraderie with his four children, Richard, Ruth,
Pamela and Katherine, all of whom were his best friends until his death, Pamela's eloquent tribute to her father and family at the funeral ceremonies was both poignant and amusing, and a fitting tribute to a unique man blessed by a long and fruitful life.
HJB