Phillips, Miles H. (Miles Harris)

Miles Harris Phillips was born in Portishead, near Bristol in 1875. Following a sound medical education at University College Bristol, Bristol Royal Infirmary, and King's College, London, from which he graduated with honours in obstetrics, he travelled to Japan as a ship's surgeon to recuperate from an illness, and returned to a position as house surgeon at Leicester Royal Infirmary. In 1904 he began his long association with the Jessop Hospital for Women, Sheffield, joining as resident house surgeon, and rising to senior surgeon and part-time professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Sheffield University between 1921 and 1935. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1903, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1937 and received honorary doctorates from Bristol and Sheffield in 1933 and 1939. He was President of the North of England Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society (1918-1920), part-time Chair of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Sheffield (1921-1935), and President of the obstetrics and gynaecology section of the Royal Society of Medicine (1937), and was also instrumental in restoring the library of William Smellie. On his retirement from the Chair of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and his hospital appointments in 1935, he returned to the West and settled in Laugharne, Camarthenshire. It was by no means a peaceful retirement, as he soon found that rural west Wales was in need of an organised obstetric and gynaecological service, and he helped to arrange and integrate existing hospital services in the province.

A Foundation Fellow of the RCOG from 1929, and member of Council between 1929 and 1940, Phillips was a Vice-President (1937 -1940) and an energetic member of the College. He was, among other things, a member of the Library Committee until his death, and served as an external examiner and member of various other committees. Phillips brought attention to 'Obstetric Shock' with his paper in 1934 and was a pioneer of many techniques which are now commonplace, in particular in respect to hysterectomies. He was a great lecturer and teacher and is probably best remembered as an avid collector of obstetrical works, a hobby which started around 1930. He died in Northampton in January 1965 at the age of 89.

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