| John Hinton |
 John Hinton was born in 1926. A county scholarship and a low family income secured entry to the public school, Christ’s Hospital,
where he was a boarder from age eleven. War-time incentives to study medicine, encouraged him away from an interest in veterinary
science, and he undertook his medical training at King’s College Hospital in London. During training, John Hinton abandoned
early ideas of becoming a surgeon in favour of medicine and also psychiatry, as he found he was at ease talking with patients.
John Hinton qualified in 1949 and after higher medical training and some psychiatric experience, finally opted to study psychiatry
at the Maudsley (1955-61). He then moved to join Dennis Hill’s new Unit of Psychiatry at the Middlesex Hospital, where in
1966 he became only the ninth Professor of Psychiatry in the country. Although John Hinton’s main career has been as an academic/hospital
psychiatrist, throughout his career an interest in the experiences of dying patients has developed as a strong research theme,
contributing significantly to the world of hospice/palliative care. Subjects under discussion in his interview include his
1963 study of the distress experienced by people dying in hospital, and the use of the Brompton Cocktail in treating dying
patients; his connections with Colin Murray Parkes and St Christopher’s Hospice; his 1967 book, Dying, which was seminal in
collating material from both sides of the Atlantic to form a body of scientifically respectable knowledge; and his 1979 comparative
study of service settings for terminal care.
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| Interview conducted by David Clark, 25 April 1996 |
| Interview Duration: 1 hour, 38 minutes |
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