IN REMEMBRANCE
ROBERT ACLAND, MD 1921-2016
Fig. 1
The January 2016 death of Robert Acland, MBBS, FRCS( Fig. 1), took a colorful, innovative surgical pioneer from the local and international stage. As a University of Louisville( U of L) plastic surgeon, Acland contributed greatly to the emerging field of microsurgery over the last quarter of the 20 th century. During that period, he developed essential technology and key instruments for joining tiny arteries and veins( in the 1-millimeter diameter range), and he eloquently advocated for applications of microsurgery to the broader field of reconstructive plastic surgery. Subsequently, he created a second career teaching anatomy, with a 7-volume video atlas produced at U of L that added great clarity and perspective to traditional teaching methods. Both his microsurgical tool designs and anatomic teaching aids gained great acclaim and spread worldwide.
Acland was an exceptionally colorful character. In a surgical department filled with strong personalities, he stood out. Although sometimes viewed as a mad scientist( an image he promoted), his contributions really came from a steady, intense focus on his projects, with exclusion of all distractions. Thomas Edison’ s quote,“ Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration” applies, as Bob’ s creative insights became reality through his total focus and intense commitment of effort. He possessed an enormous curiosity that ranged from the small technical details of a surgical challenge to the natural world outdoors. He was impishly irreverent, always ready to launch a humor-tipped lance toward accepted conventions, errant principles or pompous personalities. He was fiercely independent, with a proclivity toward the conspiratorial. He had a love of creativity and of the absurd, views he shared with Bette Levy, his wife of the past 24 years.
Acland’ s individualism, distrust of authority and purposeful
informality were likely related to his unique familial background. His ancestry was rooted in British aristocracy, as represented by the popular PBS series, Downton Abbey. Since the 17 th century, Aclands have held high titles and an extensive ancestral estate with a great manor house and 65,000 lush acres near Exeter, called Killerton. Born in 1941, he was the second of three sons of Sir Richard Thomas Dyke Acland, the 15 th Baronet of Columb John, and his wife, Anne Alford. Although the setting was aristocratic, with portraits of titled ancestors of over three centuries and paintings by Constable and Reynolds on the walls, a philosophical sea-change engulfed the Acland family after World War II. That era saw the high-water mark of British socialism, and Bob’ s parents’ strong socialist leanings gave them leading roles in that movement. Their ancestors undoubtedly turned in their graves as Sir Richard became a Member of Parliament under the Labour banner, and then became a founding member of the far-left British Common Wealth Party, which advocated common ownership rather than private property. Consistent with his principles, Sir Richard donated their ancestral estate to the National Trust in 1944, a gift that was one of the largest such donations ever made in the United Kingdom. Deprived of the enormous resources of Killerton lands, the Aclands thereafter would have to make it on their own, and Bob’ s chosen path became medicine and plastic surgery. Currently, Killerton remains beautifully preserved, with a large manor house, formal gardens and beautiful countryside, which vividly represents the peak era of British aristocracy. In contrast, Bob loved informality and simple living, as illustrated by the rustic one-room cabin and outhouse he hand-built and greatly cherished on southern Indiana forest land( Fig. 2). There, Bob took great joy in building, clearing land and massive bonfires. Digging the outhouse trench was especially satisfying. In his parents’ footsteps, he has donated this to the Nature Conservancy.
14 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE