Thomas Lane

Clongowes 1905-1911 I Thomas Lane

Thomas Lane (1894-1967), doctor and pioneering urologist, was born in India, the son of an Irish doctor in the medical service, and attended Clongowes in 1905-11. He graduated as a doctor from TCD in 1916, becoming MD in 1921. In 1920 he joined the staff of the Meath Hospital, working in the pathology and radiology departments. He was appointed a visiting surgeon in 1922. In the mid1930s, after a visit to the Mayo Clinic in USA, he switched to urology, becoming Ireland’s founding father of that speciality. He quickly established a reputation for genito-urinary surgery at the Meath by dramatically reducing deaths from prostatectomies. When his ambitious and long-cherished plan for a specialist urology wing at the hospital was in danger of foundering, he garnered international support, and in 1955 the new 80-bed urological unit – the second largest in Europe – was finally opened. It was designed in accordance with his ideas. Lane enjoyed an international reputation as a urologist, and the Meath became a place of pilgrimage for foreign surgeons. The Canadian Nobel laureate, Charles Huggins, suggested that the new unit should be named after Lane, but he rejected the proposal. However, the modern urology unit at Tallaght Hospital is called the Lane Ward to honour his memory and achievement. Lane was the author of many articles on urology, lecturer in urology at TCD and a founder member of the British Association of Urologists. Described as a perfectionist and impossibly utopian, he pushed for better hospital laboratory services and supported higher pay for nurses. In 1957 he became an honorary fellow of RCSI, the first practising Irish surgeon since 1786 to be so honoured. His son, Victor Lane (OC 1937-42), was also a leading urologist at the Meath Hospital.