Dr. Clive Bruton (1941-1996): world renowned neuropathologist of Runwell Hospital
Clive Bruton was born in Leicestershire in 1941. He was educated in South London and went into medicine as a career. His first job was in Rochford Hospital. He later specialised in neuropathology and returned to Essex in 1968. He was Senior Registrar at Runwell Hospital, a post held jointly with the Maudsley Hospital in London. He worked with Professor J. A. N. Corsellis. Corsellis is famous for building up what would become the world’s largest collection of about 8000 brain specimens. The ‘Brain Bank’ consisted of brains that were unusual in some way and included around 1,000 from former Runwell patients who would have been mentally ill and over 300 from patients at the Maudsley who had suffered from epilepsy. Also included were brains from people who had suffered with dementia and Alzheimers disease. Corsellis and Bruton did important work on how boxers’ brains were affected by their sport. This resulted in amateur boxers wearing protective head gear and boxing being banned in UK schools.
Dr Bruton went in to general practice in Birmingham but maintained his links with the neuropathology department at Runwell. He carried out studies into schizophrenia and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, widely known as mad cow disease. When Professor Corsellis died in 1994 it seemed that the collection would be disposed of but Dr Bruton argued for it to be passed on to the care of Southend Community Care Services NHS Trust and he was later appointed as Curator of the Corsellis Collection. He died in February 1996 in Rawreth.
The Collection was later handed on to the West London Mental Health NHS Trust but proved too expensive to maintain and was closed and broken up and redistributed in 2016.
The photographs show Dr Bruton in 1987 looking through the post mortem Register of Runwell Hospital for 1936 and holding an example of a brain sample (1995). Photos from the Evening Echo archive.
Comments about this page
Add your own comment
Reading this is very interesting, the photos are very good and valuable. I am a Professor of Neurology in Germany, very interested in anything about Runwell and neuropathology there or related to the Maudsley Hospital / Institute of Psychiatry. Wrote a piece about Corsellis in BRAIN 2010. If you might hold more photos related to this, please contact me via burkhard.kasper (@) uk-erlangen.de – Thanks!
[Editor’s note: Details of the article mentioned above:
Neuropathology of epilepsy and psychosis: the contributions of J.A.N. Corsellis
Burkhard S. Kasper, David C. Taylor, Dieter Janz, Ekkehard M. Kasper, Michael Maier, Matthew R. Williams, Timothy J. Crow
Brain, Volume 133, Issue 12, December 2010, Pages 3795–3805,
https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awq235
https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/133/12/3795/305367 ]
When we first moved to Wickford in 1968, Dr.Bruton was working as a GP at the now closed practice at 66 Swan Lane, as well as I believe working at Runwell. Also believe that his wife worked at the GP practice too.
I had the privilege of frequenting the Neuropathological Department whilst employed as a cadet nurse in 1971-72. I was working with the Electroencephalograph Team/Department at Runwell Hospital and attended several really interesting Lectures given by one of the country’s top neurologists from St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London.
I am from the U.S. and was training in neuropathology in the early 1990s. I had a chance to meet Dr Bruton in England in 1993 and he was very generous with his time and insights. I was so happy to find this web page memorializing him and his work.
Add a comment about this page