Campbell Semple

Died: January 15, 2016

J CAMPBELL Semple, who has died aged 80, was a leading orthopaedic surgeon and a pre-eminent authority on conditions of, and injuries to, the hand.

Away from the operating theatre he was also a passionate and almost obsessive inventor and builder, creating everything from kayaks in his teens to wind turbines in his later years.

As a specialist surgeon with an international reputation, he was regularly called upon to provide expert medical opinion in legal cases involving damage and injury, particularly to the hands and lower arm.

In the 1980s and 1990s, as the use of workplace computers grew, reported incidents of repetitive strain injury (RSI) increased exponentially. Many experts believed that the condition was caused by long periods of repetitive motions in a fixed position.

However, Campbell Semple took a much more sceptical view and, as a result, was often asked to give evidence in RSI-related cases on behalf of employers and insurance companies rather than the plaintiff.

James Campbell Semple was born in Fergus Drive, Glasgow, the first of two sons to William and Mary Semple who were both artists. He was educated at Glasgow Academy before going on to study medicine at Glasgow University. After graduating in 1960 he was among the last young British men to receive his call-up papers (conscription formally ended on December 31 that year).

By the time he left for basic training his mother, a formidable character, had taught him the three talents she believed were required by any self-respecting gentleman, namely typing, knitting and ballroom dancing.

He served as an Army medical officer for two years, based in Germany and then in the Levantine. It was while serving in the Gulf that he was attached to the Trucial Oman Scouts, a paramilitary security force commanded and administered by the British.

In 1963, not long after being demobbed, he married Joanne McNeil, a gifted writer. The couple had met while they were both at university and, when Mr Semple had been in the Forces, she had spent time in New York, mixing with the Pop Art community.

James Campbell Semple quickly resumed his medical career and started training as a surgeon in Glasgow. In 1966 the couple moved to Oxford where he studied orthopaedics at the renowned Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre. It was during this period that Joanne gave birth to their two daughters, Sally and Kirsty.

In 1969 Mr Semple and his young family moved to North America where he took up the position of Hand Fellow at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He returned to the UK late the following year to become Consultant Hand Surgeon at Derby Royal Infirmary.

Then in 1973 the family came home to Scotland when he accepted the post of Consultant Hand Surgeon at Glasgow’s Western Infirmary. For the best part of the next 20 years his reputation as a highly skilled surgeon steadily grew and, by the time he retired from the NHS in 1990, he was arguably the foremost authority in his field.

He continued to operate with great distinction for many years as a private consultant with offices in Glasgow and in Harley Street, London, finding himself in great demand as an expert witness. He also kept his connection to the Middle East, forged during his national service, by becoming Orthopaedic Advisor to the Sultanate of Oman, a post he held from 1975-1985.

Throughout their married life, wherever they were living or working, Campbell and Joanne Semple always maintained a second home in an isolated corner of Argyll. They had discovered and fallen in love with Drumbuie, a former shepherd’s cottage overlooking Loch Sunart, shortly after they married in 1963. It has remained as the family’s anchor ever since.

The couple also maintained two flats in the West End of Glasgow. Joanne, who was a talented scriptwriter and worked with the Scottish Film Council and the BBC Scotland library, died in 2007.

It was at Drumbuie that Mr Semple indulged his eccentric passion for invention. It had started off well when, as a teenager, he and a chum designed and built their own canoes and paddled them all over the Scottish coast.

However, though he patented many of his ideas in later years, none of them turned out to be commercially successful. Some were connected to his work as a surgeon - artificial finger joints (a little like miniature hip joints) and replacement Achilles’ tendons.

The rest were as prosaic as they were diverse. Among them was a form of micro chipping for pet animals and a system for farming scallops.

He also invented a type of wind turbine to provide power at Drumbuie (which had no electricity connection). He made no fewer than 19 versions of the expensive 4m-high machines. For wind turbines they held the dubious distinction of being net consumers of electricity. In the end, all of them fell over.

J Campbell Semple is survived by his daughters Sally and Kirsty, grandsons Archie and Luke, and his brother Alan.

ALLAN LAING