Great Scot! Obituary: Sir James Whyte Black

Like my venerable ancestors, I should have succumbed long ago to that peculiarly Scottish affliction, dietary-induced and hereditary heart failure. Fortunately, my body refused to yield ahead of my alloted three score years and ten, mainly due to the efforts of two men – a dogged researcher, analytical pharmacologist and winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine, and a brilliant Hong Kong academic, hands-on surgeon and cardiologist.

I can write this today because of the cool intervention of the latter coronary craftsman, Professor Lau Chu-pak who, if the techniques of angioplasty had been perfected a few decades earlier, would undoubtedly have extended the earthly existence of my clan’s forebears…