Leslie Thomas Morton 1907–2004

Obituary LESLIE THOMAS MORTON 1907±2004 Leslie Morton, who died on 17 February at the age of ninety-six, had a distinguished career as a medical librarian, but was known to the world of medical history and bibliography as compiler of the indispensable reference work`Garrison-Morton'. Several of his friends spent time as juniors at the Wellcome Library. Leslie turned down a post there in 1930, but was one of the Library's first users when his friend William Bishop, later founding-editor of this journal, became Librarian in 1946. Leslie produced numerous books and articles on medical librarianship, bibliography and history. His first book, How to use a medical library, appeared a lifetime ago, in 1934. Among his historical publications were A bibliography of medical and biomedical bibliography (1989, 1992) and A chronology of medicine and related sciences (1997) (both with Robert Moore); visits to the Wellcome Library to keep them up to date continued to the end of his life. His magnum opus, however, was`Garrison-Morton'. In 1938 he conceived the idea of a bibliography of the significant texts in the history of medicine, and took as his base thèRevised students' checklist' compiled by Fielding Garrison (1870±1935). When St Thomas's Library was evacuated to Guildford, Leslie took his shoeboxes of slips with him to work on in the evenings, when there was little else to do, and on Saturday visits to London. The book appeared in 1943, entitled A medical bibliography: a checklist of texts illustrating the history of the medical sciences, with Garrison's name generously placed first on the title page, and became the indispensable tool of librarians, students, historians, historically-minded doctors, book collectors and dealers. Garrison-Morton numbers came to be cited as a canon, although some dealers mysteriously seem to regard``not in Garrison-Morton'' as a selling point! Leslie produced, single-handed, three much enlarged editions up to 1983. The 5th edition (1989), edited by Jeremy Norman, at last gave him full credit with the title Morton's medical bibliography. He was aware that his arrangement and selection were not perfect, but felt that his generalist's perspective was preferable to the more subjective viewpoint of specialists in particular subjects. He had a happy family life in Pinner with his wife Bertha, children and grandchildren, and was a keen traveller. He and Bertha celebrated their diamond wedding in 1993, four years before her death. When her health began to fail, he mastered domestic skills, remaining self-sufficient …