Lesley Duncan finds out more about Dr James Burn Russell

IN any newspaper office at any given time, there are probably at least a couple of journalists beavering away in their spare moments on the novel of the century. By contrast, the subject of Edna Robertson's new book has been waiting a century to be written about comprehensively.

She is a former assistant editor and chief leader writer of The Herald. He is Dr James Burn Russell, Glasgow's first full-time Medical Officer of Health. Her study of this admirable Victorian, who strove so hard to improve the living conditions and health of the Glasgow populace, is published today by the Tuckwell Press. The book launch brings to fulfilment an enterprise that had its beginnings a quarter of a century ago. Glasgow's Doctor not only gives due recognition to Russell's pioneering achievements, but sheds light on the city's social history in the later nineteenth century, when industrial expansion led to unbelievably sordid living conditions in the slums.

Russell was a peripheral figure in Robertson's earlier history of Glasgow's Sick Children's Hospital. She was curious enough about him to decide to research his life further. Four years ago, and by then an honorary research associate of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at Glasgow University, she left The Herald to complete her book. Her background as a history graduate at Gilmorehill and Michigan State University ensured her scrupulous research; her journalist's skills have guaranteed that the

end-product is highly readable.

Its cover, one of Annan's celebrated photographs of a High Street slum, only hints

at the deprivations endured by the poorest citizens of the Empire's Second City - a

state of affairs that engaged Russell's sympathies.

He was, on the face of it, an unlikely man to be a medical pioneer. ''When he was a student, people thought he would have a literary career,'' points out Robertson. He could also have been a professional physicist, since he was a protege of Lord Kelvin, and almost lost his life when assisting the latter at the laying of the first, briefly successful, Atlantic cable.

Russell was an instinctively shy man, reluctant to speak even at committee meetings. ''Yet,'' says Robertson, ''he became outspoken almost to the point of inviting controversy.'' Throughout his career as MOH (1872-1898) he didn't hesitate to clash with vested interests. He also made himself an eloquent public lecturer. One celebrated set of lectures in particular opened the eyes of middle-class Glaswegians to the realities of slum life and won over the ratepayers to housing reforms - including the compulsory provision of water closets in tenements.

At once a visionary, believing the city could be as healthy an environment as the country, and a ''hands-on'' person, Russell ''didn't sit around his office in Montrose Street but was out and about in the city slums'', says Robertson. His keenness for food standards and nutrition has present-day echoes with BSE. Worried about the role of infected milk in spreading scarlet fever and other diseases, he would go as far afield as Galloway and Stirlingshire, pursuing his detective work into the farms concerned and urging improvements.

Russell also knew that infected beef could be a source of TB and his sanitary inspectors would intercept jobbing butchers' vans coming into the city, examine carcasses, and impound infected meat. He was, indeed, to gain an international reputation for his policies on TB prevention and was also influential in the founding of several Glasgow hospitals. His combination of scientific thinking and literary power made him especially effective in his job. ''He was able to bring all his eloquence to bear on the problems of the slums,'' says Robertson. This was particularly important since, in those kailyard days of Scottish writing, ''there was no Scottish equivalent of Dickens to rouse middle-class consciences''. The book's many quotes from Russell bear out his visionary sense and his realisation that moral niceties could not be expected in deprived social circumstances. After 25 years in Russell's

company, Robertson still admires him. ''I couldn't have invested such time and energy on someone I didn't like, but I wouldn't like to have him regarded as a saint either.'' She points out that he was against state medicine, believing it was better for people's souls to pay through charity. ''I don't think that's a sustainable idea,'' she says, ''but at the same time he was a very compassionate man.''

As for the writing process, she says that she composed quite a lot of the book in her head when out hill-walking. She adds with disarming self-knowledge: ''Writing a book is a good way to get other things done, particularly gardening.''

n Glasgow's Doctor: James Burn Russell, 1837-1904,

by Edna Robertson, is published by the Tuckwell Press, priced #12.99.