A Life in Medicine and the Arts

Henry Fraser’s entertaining autobiography starts with tales of a unique childhood growing up at the local governance centre of a rural parish in Barbados, where most parishioners visited the offices of his parents at the family home. This rich community involvement had a profound influence on his life of service. Sir Henry describes why he chose to study medicine at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, and so became a passionate West Indian. After specialization and PhD studies in London, he returned to Barbados and helped to build better health care there. He promoted rational therapeutics regionally and globally, working with PAHO and WHO, and his research centre and wide-ranging research have greatly benefited the Caribbean. His passion for teaching, patient care, mentoring and management shows throughout the book. Sir Henry has been described as the Renaissance man of Barbados: in addition to his remarkable medical career, he has been public orator for Barbados and for the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, and an independent senator in the Barbados Senate (where he discovered the reasons for the syndrome he labelled Government’s Implementation Deficit Disorder or GIDD). His other lifelong passions have been art, architectural history and heritage preservation, and writing. His autobiography makes fascinating reading: he is a natural story teller and, as he often says, “History is his story.” The book is replete with captivating anecdotes and is illustrated with some of his paintings.