Volume 7 - History of Anaesthesia Society

KkTWEXH BRYN 'IHOPIAS - AH APPREIATION
Kenneth Bryn Thornas was one of a quartet of distinguished IJelsh medical
historians, the Welsh Mafia, as they were whiinsically described. Tne
other members of this enviable ensemble, Neil McIntyre, Geraint James
and John Cule are happily still with us. Bryn, as he was invariably
known to his friends, was not born in the Principality, but in a corner
of a foreign field - if, that is, a middle-class house in leafy suburban
Sutton can be so described - on 30 September, 1915, the oldest of three
children, 2 boys and a girl.
I can only assune that he received his early education in or around
Sutton, which probably accounts for the fact that he was not Welshspeaking,
a shortcoming he deeply regretted. What I do know is that
when Bryn was aged 15 his father, a schoolmaster, was elevated to a
headmastership in Swansea and he thereafter attended Swansea Gramnar
School where he was a contemporary of that Bohemian yet very Welsh pet
and dramatist, another Thomas, Dylan. As a schoolboy, the only
exceptional talent he appears to have exhibited was not in scholarship,
but in the field of music and drama. He had a fine speaking and singing
voice and he did the rounds of Eisteddfods at the Crystal Palace and
elsewhere collecting a host of trophies for singing, reciting and celloplaying
as he went.
He began his pre-
- +.'ti*?r --S clinical medical
studies at Swansea
University College
and in 1933 he
entered King' s
College, London, for
khe canpletion of
his
medical
education , which
included clinical
work at Charing
Cross Hospital. He
qualified MRCS, LRCP
in 1939. It would
be neither unjust,
nor unkind to claim
that as a medical
student Bryn was not
outstanding; none of
the glittering
prizes on offer for
the eager beavers
came his way. A
possible explanation
for this lack of
distinction could be
that he devoted
rather more time