Dermod MacCarthy

Dermod de la Chevallerie MacCarthy FRCP (15 March 1911 – 12 July 1986) was a British paediatrician, notable for establishing a paediatric unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and conducting research into common disturbances in childhood and growth in deprived children. He was most notable for his work to encourage mothers to be with their children when in hospitals. Life MacCarthy was the son of Sir Desmond MacCarthy, the foremost literary and dramatic critic of his day, and of Mollie Warre Cornish, the daughter of a vice-provost of Eton College. An author in her own right, Cornish wrote A Nineteenth-century childhood in 1924. MacCarthy was educated at Gresham's School and upon finishing his education there began to train as a physician at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, where he qualified in 1934. MacCarthy took up a number of positions in medicine, before becoming a ship's doctor on a vessel travelling to the Far East. In 1947, he married Marie-France Geoffroy-Dechaume, whom he had known since childhood, but it was only when MacCarthy was in his mid thirties that romance blossomed. During World War II, Geoffroy-Dechaume joined the French Resistance and was awarded the Croix-de-Guerre for heroism in her active service against the enemy. Career Before the Second World War, MacCarthy had already decided to specialise and to become a paediatrician, and by the start of the war was working in Great Ormond Street Hospital. He became a Resident at about the time of the start of the Blitz, and some of his earliest duties included organizing the evacuation of children from the hospital to outlying and countryside hospitals. In 1942, he joined the Royal Naval Reserve and served as a surgeon, with the rank of Lieutenant, continuing to hold a commission until 1946.