And just like that, not only are we in 2025, but the Year of the Snake has slithered into our lives as well. Life is stressful as it is and this hobbit has decided that we will start off the year with some light-hearted stuff – about multi-talented doctors who are famous for stuff other than the practice of medicine. Here is a sample of such famous (or depending on perspective, infamous) medically trained people
Sir Roger Bannister (1929 ~ 2018)
The first man to run the mile in less than 4 minutes on 4 May 1954. He was also a revered neurologist in his later years and was Master of Pembroke College, Oxford. He did much research on the autonomic nervous system. He also published a very well received neurology textbook, Brain and Bannister’s Clinical Neurology.
He said he would rather be remembered for his work as a neurologist than for his running. But alas, the reverse is true.
Michael Crichton (1942 ~ 2008)
He is best known for writing Jurassic Park. In real life, he graduated from Harvard Medical School with an MD, although he never practised medicine. He was also the creator of the long-running and popular TV series ER. His books have sold 200 million copies worldwide.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 ~ 1930)
The author of Sherlock Holmes really needs no introduction. He was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and had wanted to be an ophthalmologist. He started off as a ship doctor before setting up practices in Plymouth, Portsmouth and Southsea, all of which were not particularly successful. But he struck gold when he created the character Sherlock Holmes.
The rights to his first Sherlock Holmes novel (A Study in Scarlet) were sold in 1886 for only 25 pounds. But the character became so popular that it literally refused to die. Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes killed in the 1893 novel “The Final Problem” so that he could concentrate on writing other genres. But there was such a public outcry that he had to resurrect the character in the famous “The Hound of the Baskervilles” in 1901
Tun Mahathir Mohamed (1925 ~ )
And of course we have Dr Mahathir, the longest serving Malaysia Prime Minister (a total of 24 years over two spells) and the world’s oldest (at 93). An alumnus of our local King Edward VII College of Medicine (the precursor of NUS YYLSOM), he graduated in 1953 with a LMS (Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, the precursor to our MBBS) qualification.
As a student in Singapore, he was once driven to the servant quarters of the KEVII Hall instead of the medical student hostel wing because the Chinese taxi driver could not believe that a Malay could be a medical student. And that probably explains why he liked to make things difficult for Singapore from time to time when he was in charge. In any case, in the 2022 Malaysia General Elections, he lost his seat and election deposit as well, which probably reflects how far he has fallen from his once lofty perch.
Ernesto “Che” Guevara (1928 ~ 1967)
A Marxist revolutionary of almost mythical proportions who played a pivotal role in the Cuban Revolution. He was once labelled as “Castro’s Brain” by Time magazine. He was born in Argentina to an upper-class family. As a medical student, he travelled widely across South America and witnessed the widespread poverty and suffering. He concluded that this was the result of capitalist exploitation by America.
He died at the age of 39 when he was captured and killed in Bolivia while trying to start a guerilla insurgency there to overthrow the local government.
Anton Chekhov (1860 ~ 1904)
The great Russian short story-writer and playwright whose body of works has had great influence on other writers and playwrights in the last century. It is said his plays have been made into so many movies that he is second only to Shakespeare. He wrote seven full-length plays, one novel and hundreds of short stories.
He famously said, “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress”. He died at the age of 44 after a long fight with tuberculosis.
Albert Schweitzer (1875 ~ 1965)
Doctor, Theologian, Missionary and Nobel Laureate (Peace Prize). His life is the stuff of legends. He has been described as a polymath. He spent his youth studying theology and only entered the University of Strasbourg to study medicine at the age of 30, in 1905, after had been made the principal of the Theological College of Saint Thomas in 1903. He was also an authority in the repair and restoration of old pipe organs that were usually found in churches.
But he is perhaps best known for his missionary work in Gabon and his philosophy of the “Reverence of life” for which he was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952.
It is worth remembering what he said on this, “Standing, as all living beings are, before this dilemma of the will to live, a person is constantly forced to preserve his own life and life in general only at the cost of other life. If he has been touched by the ethic of reverence for life, he injures and destroys life only under a necessity he cannot avoid, and never from thoughtlessness”.
Sun Yat-Sen (1866 – 1925)
The man who overthrew the Qing Dynasty and more than two millennia of imperial dynastic rule in China can arguably be said to be the one doctor who has changed more lives than any other medically trained person. He is so revered that they even named the town or city he was born in after him: Zhongshan, which is adjacent to Macau. In China, cities are never named after a person, not even after founders of dynasties. He is venerated in both Mainland China and Taiwan.
He was one of the two students out of 12 to graduate from the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (What is now known as HK University) and was licensed to practise medicine in 1892. Before studying in Hong Kong, he actually spent a few years in Hawaii with his elder brother, where he picked up English from attending school there.
He fomented many unsuccessful uprisings before finally succeeding in 1911 with the Wuchang Uprising, using money raised from Penang Chinese. The two or three uprisings prior to the Wuchang uprising were financed by Singapore money, but they were unfortunately unsuccessful. So ever since then, Penang has had the bragging rights to claim that Qing Dynasty was finally overthrown by money from the Chinese community in Penang (and not Singapore, sigh).
Lo Ta-Yu (1954 ~ )
He is sometimes called the godfather of pop music in Taiwan. He hails from a family of doctors and became a doctor to comply with his family’s ambitions for him, graduating from the medical school in Taichung. He wrote the Chinese equivalent of “We Are The World” – “Tomorrow Will Be Better” which was performed by more than 60 artistes from HK, Malaysia, Taiwan and Singapore in 1985. His hits are too many to list here but it is fair to say that anyone who knows Mandarin and who are above 40 years old would have heard and hummed one of his songs sometime in their lives.
Michelle Bachelet (1951 ~ )
Descended from winemakers from Chassagne Montrachet, Burgundy, she ran Chile for 8 years over two spells (2006 to 2010 and 2014 to 2018). Her father was a Brigadier General in the Chilean Airforce and was purged and tortured for opposing a coup led by Augusto Pinochet and she had to flee Chile after his death and live in exile in Australia and East Germany for a few years. Her first spell as President was a very popular one with her achieving approval ratings of a record 84% when she left office (Chilean Presidents are not allowed to serve two consecutive terms). However, her second term was not as successful and she left office with approval ratings of only 39% in 2018. She obtained her medical qualification from the University of Chile in 1983.
Bashar al-Assad (1965 ~),
Bottom of the list is Dr Assad who ruled Syria for 24 years from 2000-2024, after his father died. He was a graduate of Damascus University and was training to be an ophthalmologist in London before being recalled by his father back to Syria after his elder brother died.
Between 2011 and 2024, it is estimated that some 500,000 to 600,000 people died in the Syrian Civil War before he was toppled from power by a revolution led by a coalition of Syrian rebels. He ran a totalitarian regime and was not averse to using chemical warfare on his opponents during the civil war. He has fled Syria last year and now lives in exile in Russia. Maybe he should have stuck to his ophthalmology training in London.
hobbitsma 