In it he analysed the various reasons for admission to geriatric wards: therapeutic option expecting rapid recovery medical urgency needing hospital treatment basic care

In it, he analysed the various reasons for admission to geriatric wards: therapeutic option (expecting rapid recovery); medical urgency (needing hospital treatment); basic care (unfit to provide food, warmth, cleanliness and safety for themselves); or relief of strain on relatives. His first book, Survival of the Unfittest (1972), described the plight of the old and the disadvantaged in the East End of Glasgow. He worked first of all in the former Glasgow workhouse Forest Hall, and then in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary - though, as was the habit of the time, his department was not actually in the Infirmary but in an associated municipal hospital.Here he developed an exemplary department and directed his incisive brain to analysing the problems of long-term illness in a growing elderly population. Many of the patients were those unacceptable in the voluntary hospitals of the time, elderly people with chronic diseases. Morris died prematurely but his legacy - the challenge of long-term disabling illness - was taken up by his successor Stanley Alstead and his colleague Ferguson Anderson. Into this unfashionable field of medicine Bernard Isaacs entered with infectious enthusiasm. Following National Service in Malaya from 1949 to 1951 and training in general medicine, Isaacs entered the emerging speciality of geriatrics of which he was to become a national leader. Morris took beds not in the traditional voluntary teaching hospital but rather in a vast municipal hospital at Stobhill.

Isaacs's lifetime work in old-age medicine began in 1948 when he was appointed house physician to the late Noah Morris, Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics at Glasgow University. As Professor of Geriatric Medicine at Birmingham University from 1974 to 1989, Bernard Isaacs created a teaching programme in geriatrics for medical students, established a University Certificate in Gerontology and developed and supervised a regional programme for training specialists in geriatric medicine. His weekends in summer were spent at Ossining, a beautiful wooded estate in New York State enjoying a game of croquet or swimming in the lake and skiing in winter on the snowbound roads and hills.Corliss Lamont, philosopher, philanthropist; born Englewood, New York 24 March 1902; married first Margaret Hayes Irish (one son, three daughters; marriage dissolved), secondly Helen Boydon Lamb (deceased), thirdly Beth Kehner; died Ossining, New York 26 April 1995.. He made important collections of Masefield's letters and memorabilia for the Columbia Rare Book Archive and produced a small book of verse under the title Lover's Credo. Together they opened a television channel in order to transmit their views on world politics.I met Corliss and Beth Lamont first in 1989. They took me to Ledbury, in Herefordshire, to visit the house where John Masefield was born - The Knapp.

The next day, Corliss gave a talk to the Humanist Society at Conway Hall, in Red Lion Square, London, and his eloquence and wit were astonishing as were his ready answers to questions.In old age he remained active, writing books of reminiscence. He was impressed by the scale of physical achievements, but uneasily aware of the terrible inhumanities that still prevailed.In his old age he was comforted by the beauty and sympathy of a remarkable woman whom he met on the dance floor and who became his third wife Beth Kehner was half his age, the mother of 14 children. She shared his compassion and his idealism as well as his political and humanitarian beliefs. A series of open letters reaped a wave of publicity and a revulsion against the disastrous war. Undoubtedly he played an important role in influencing public opinion by constantly campaigning, writing and publishing his view in the media.In 1976 Lamont undertook a tour of Communist China which revealed to him the warts in the Great Cultural Revolution. Some 30 of these he published privately under the Basic Pamphlet Series.During the 1960s, the Vietnam war loomed large and Lamont found himself challenging his old school rival Cabot Lodge, now ambassador to South Vietnam. He published pamphlets protesting against the undemocratic techniques of the Kennedy administration which, he affirmed, flagrantly abused the Declaration of Independence.

He gave Columbia large tracts of land by the Hudson river and funded numerous charities and cultural institutions.In the early 1960s Lamont became engulfed in the Cuban crisis. In Yes to Life (1981), he stated that from his parents he had inherited more money than he could put to intelligent personal use but he was able to give most of it away for what he considered "the good of fellow human beings". He defined humanism as a philosophy of joyous service for the greater good of humanity He certainly lived up to his beliefs. He also had 150 incoming letters censored by the postal authorities. He later received an official apology and an award of $2,000 damages.In 1947 Lamont returned to Columbia to teach a course of Naturalistic Humanism He remained for 12 years. His visits to the Soviet Union were viewed with suspicion by the authorities, but during the early Thirties he published pamphlets and articles and a book, Russia Day by Day, knowing full well that he was under surveillance.During the Second World War, on account of his activities for civil liberties, he was shunned by the military.