John Studd (1940 – 2021)
John was a Consultant Gynaecologist at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, London, and also Professor of Gynaecology at Imperial College. He qualified in 1962 and worked and trained in Birmingham, Zimbabwe and London. He was Consultant Gynaecologist in Salisbury and Rhodesia, and was then Consultant and Senior Lecturer at the University of Nottingham, before he moved to London in 1974 as a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at King’s College Hospital.
His early research was on chronic renal disease and high blood pressure in pregnancy (MD thesis), but in 1969 started the first menopause clinic in Birmingham. Hormone treatment for menopause was so controversial at that time, that the clinic was closed down for three months following protests from the BMA. However, the optimism placed in HRT had been confirmed and John continued to work on specific treatments for menopausal symptoms. He pioneered the sequential oestrogen/progestogen treatment and also the continuous combined oestrogen/progestogen non-bleeding treatment. He has championed the use of hormone implants for women with osteoporosis or with severe depressive, or sexual, problems after the menopause and as an almost routine route of HRT after hysterectomy.
He was the Founder and Vice-President of the National Osteoporosis Society and was a Council Member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists for 12 years and a President of the Section of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Royal Society of Medicine. Between 2005 and 2007, he was Chairman of the British Menopause Society.
