Dr Gordon Lees

Gordon Lees served as Member of the BJP Editorial Board 1975-81; the Committee 1983-84; Secretary to the BJP Editorial Board 1984-90.As a medical student at University of Aberdeen, Gordon Lees approached Hans Kosterlitz, his most impressive teacher, about the possibility of assisting him in his laboratory during vacations. Lees presented results from one project in an Oral Communication at the First Joint Meeting of the British and Scandinavian Pharmacological Societies in Copenhagen (1960). His postgraduate research was mainly concerned with the actions of narcotic analgesics in vivo and in vitro and the development of the ground rules for establishing whether or not which of these were specifically receptor-mediated.With the burgeoning interest in the enteric nervous system, techniques for intracellular electrophysiological recording from the intrinsic neurones were an essential development. The complex correlations between the morphology, physiology, pharmacology and immunohistochemistry of myenteric and submucous neurones and their functional connections became the focus in later international collaborations.