David Abraham Goitein Galton
Authors: Caroline Richmond
Journal: BMJ (2007)

David Galton was one of the first medical oncologists and the first in the United Kingdom to produce remissions for patients with lymphoma and leukaemia. In 1957, when he entered cancer research, the life expectancy of acute leukaemia patients was measured in weeks or even days. The outlook for lymphoma and myeloma were equally bleak. In the United States cancer chemotherapy was taking its first steps. By 1987, when Galton retired, acute leukaemia was classified into many types, many curable, and most treatable, with patients surviving months or years. He played a key role in this story, thanks to his acute observance at the microscope, and his ability to correlate these observations with what he saw in the clinic.

As a young doctor at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford in 1947, he took a microscope slide of a patient's cells to the great haematologist John Dacie, later Sir John, at Hammersmith Hospital's postgraduate medical school. This was to sow the seeds of his later career. Throughout his life Galton recorded patients' details in small notebooks, so that when he saw a new case he could compare it with previous patients and their histology.

In 1947 Galton joined the staff of the Chester Beatty Research Institute (now the Institute of Cancer Research), attached to the Royal Cancer Hospital, now the Royal Marsden. He worked under Alexander Haddow, who had discovered that carcinogens could retard the growth of tumours caused by other, unrelated, carcinogens, and that this might be exploited for cancer treatment. Haddow oversaw a programme of synthesising and testing potential anti-cancer drugs.

Shortly after joining the Chester Beatty, Galton obtained a sample of aminopterin, a potential leukaemia treatment, from America. With the blessing of Haddow, Dacie, and Dacie's boss, Sir John MacMichael, he administered it to a patient with acute leukaemia at the Hammersmith. The patient, who was fully informed, had a three month remission, which was unheard of at the time. From then on, Galton spent two days a week looking after patients with leukaemia and lymphoma at Hammersmith. He published clinical trials of alkylating drugs synthesised at the Chester Beatty. He published his results on busulphan (then called myeleran) for chronic myeloblastic leukaemia in 1953, and on chlorambucil—which is still in use—for leukaemia in 1961.

Galton was born in London, the son of a Hungarian-born general practitioner who had changed his name from Goitein. From Hackney Downs School he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the young age of 17. He had an entrance scholarship to University College Hospital Medical School when he was 20, and was an exhibitioner in pathology in his final year; he qualified in 1946. He tried to enlist in the forces but was rejected as he had pulmonary tuberculosis.

Galton did his house jobs at UCH and the Royal Surrey in Guildford before moving to a joint appointment at the Marsden and Chester Beatty. In 1964 he was appointed consultant physician in chemotherapy and, jointly, reader in chemotherapy at the Institute of Cancer Research. He held honorary posts as consultant haematologist and reader in haematology at Hammersmith.

When Haddow retired in 1966 most people expected Galton to succeed him. He didn't, possibly because of friction between the hospital and the institute. Three years later, when the Medical Research Council Leukaemia Research Unit was founded at the Hammersmith, Galton was appointed director. He had been chairman of the MRC working party on leukaemia since 1959. At Hammersmith he was able to manage patients and test new treatments under rigorous conditions. He attracted top class clinicians and researchers, and the unit acquired a reputation for excellent patient care and innovative treatment regimens. He retired in 1987 but continued lecturing and looking at slides sent to him from around the world.

When Blackwell's launched the British Journal of Haematology, the first in its field, in 1950, Dacie was the first editor and invited Galton on to the editorial board. Galton succeeded him as editor during 1966-8.

In 1975 he met a like-minded French haematologist, Claude Sultan. Together with US workers they formed the FAB group—French, American, British—who met annually and exchanged slides and case histories to clarify and classify the disease, so that treatment could be refined. This resulted in the FAB classifications of leukaemia, which held sway for two decades. The group still meets biannually.

Galton was an adviser to the Leukaemia Research Fund throughout his career, and raised funds for them. In the 1970s he became secretary, and later chairman, of the Lady Tata Memorial Trust, which he continued after his retirement.

He was made professor of haematological oncology in 1976 and was awarded a CBE in 1986. His recreations were music—early in life he turned down the chance to play the piano professionally, but continued, with talented relatives, to play in the “Galton ensemble.” His recreations were amphibians and birds, wildflowers and fungi, and gardening, particularly water gardening. He swam in the sea in Norfolk.

Galton was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer in 1998. He married Patricia Davenport in 1946. She survives him, along with three sons.

David Abraham Goitein Galton, professor of haematological oncology Royal Postgraduate Medical School (b 1922, q Cambridge/University College Hospital 1946; CBE), d 28 November 2006.