Scudamore, Muriel June., 1925-2008

Dr June Scudamore, a consultant gynaecologist and Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, trained at Bedford College for Women and then at University College Hospital in London for five years, where she obtained the McGrath Scholarship in Obstetrics and Gynaecology (1949). She was also awarded the Kathleen Bush Harman Prize, presented by the British Medical Association in 1956 for research work aimed at the diminution of loss of life and health associated with child-bearing.

After posts at hospitals in England as house surgeon, general surgeon, and clinical pathologist - these hospitals included Bath, London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Manchester - she won the Rickman Godlee Travelling Scholarship of the University College Hospital in 1957, combined with the appointment as Research Fellow at the University of Chicago clinics. She became the protegee of Professor William Nixon of University College Hospital, who became her mentor and encouraged her in her career. The research was for the study of Exfoliative Cytology (the study of cells), with the associated out-patient clinic follow-up.

Dr Scudamore became a full-time cytologist in 1960 at the Hamilton General Hospital in Canada and in 1965 became Head of Department of Exfoliative Cytology at the Henderson General Hospital, plus a Research Fellow at the Ontario Cancer Foundation. On her departure from this position in 1968, she set up her own Physicians Cytology Laboratory, where she developed new techniques in the early discovery of cancers, which were used all over Ontario, saving the lives of thousands of women. She lectured in Ontario and Chicago, presented papers, organised workshops and meetings, to develop these new methods of detection, which are now part of the early treatment of cancer in Canada and elsewhere.

Dr Scudamore was elected to Membership of the International Academy of Cytology, as well as to the Fellowship of the RCOG in 1975 and to the International Academy of Cytology in 1976. She was also a member of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She returned to England in 2006.