Mike Snow established the infectious diseases unit at Newcastle General Hospital, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. At his appointment he was the first clinician to manage a small isolation unit established under the auspices of the Public Health Laboratories, with patients who came from other local hospitals with infections that needed expertise beyond that of their own consultants. His infectious diseases training was proleptic with a six-month secondment to the East Birmingham Hospital under the supervision of Alasdair Geddes. He took the unit from a single-handed consultant team managing terrified young men with HIV to a unit that now has ten consultant staff and is still expanding.
Mike was the oldest of three sons from a solidly working class background in Hinckley in the Midlands. His father (Harry) had left school at 14 to support the family despite having passed the 11 plus and being eligible for the local grammar school, his mother (Margaret, née Bennett) also left school early. They met at Sketchley’s (a dry cleaning firm in Hinckley) in World War ll and Mike was born in 1946.
Margaret and Harry were keen to encourage their sons to develop their individual talents and Mike was the first person in the family to go to university. He was always interested in science and in experimentation: his mother tolerated dissection of a pregnant guinea pig in their galley kitchen and he had a lovely time making his own crossbow. He was one of the last intakes to Hinckley Grammar School, repeating a year because he was so young and, even so, going up to university at Newcastle Medical School at just 18. He changed his choice from Birmingham to Newcastle because the people (both town and gown) whom he met at his interview were so friendly. He graduated in 1969.
His training, apart from the spell in Birmingham, was entirely in the north east. It was punctuated by three months in isolation with open tuberculosis, probably picked up from a patient. In 1978 he was appointed as a consultant general physician with an interest in infectious diseases to Newcastle General Hospital. He inherited a Trexler Isolator and the hospital’s status as one of only two high level isolation units in the UK for diseases such as viral haemorrhage fevers. At first the disease profile was mostly infection typical of the area and some tropical diseases but, in the early 1980s, HIV arrived on the scene. HIV/AIDS created great stress - there was little treatment to save the lives of early victims who had a disease that few understood, and about which there was often fear and distaste within their community. In addition, the hospital staff were trying to manage a ravaging illness where despair was not far away. Mike provided stability, knowledge, energy and a warm, supportive leadership. His legacy, in the department he created, has been the early development of a holistic model of care including integration of support from clinical psychology and social services and which is still a hallmark of the Newcastle service to this day.
Gradually the consultant team increased and he was able to step back from first hand engagement with every patient, but he was determined to try to maintain the collaborative, team-based leadership he had established from the beginning. He continued, throughout his career, to be a very general physician and was the backstop for consultations about many puzzling patients. Gradually he took on increasing management roles but management was never his first love.
Although Mike participated in HIV-related research such as clinical trials into early first line treatments in HIV infection, he was first and foremost a very busy physician. His contribution to HIV knowledge was in the clear understanding and description of the natural history of AIDS and the various presentations of the unusual organisms associated with immunodeficiency. He was co-editor of, and a major contributor to, the first ‘Oxford Handbook on Genitourinary Medicine HIV and AIDS’.
He held an honorary post with the Newcastle Medical School and enjoyed teaching. In 1992 he went with a small team from Newcastle to inspect a number of medical schools in Japan on behalf of the GMC. This led to life-long friendships and a programme that enables Japanese medical students to undertake electives in the Newcastle hospitals. This fitted well with his role, for many years, as convenor of the Newcastle Medical School undergraduate elective program which he led until his retirement in 2007.
Mike’s first wife, Carol Dixon, tragically died of a sub-arachnoid haemorrhage in 1981 leaving him with four daughters aged 5-10. He had enormous support from family, friends and neighbours (his wife’s parents arrived every Wednesday to look after the household and stay overnight whilst he was the consultant on general medical take). He and the girls became a tight family unit. In 1983 he married Harriet Mitchison, a local trainee in medicine who became a consultant gastroenterologist, but it was Mike who was always the reference point for the girls - if they were ill they might spend the day in his office lying on the examination couch and ‘helping’ the secretaries with the typing.
Mike was always a practical man. Northumberland Scouts, who were mounting an expedition to Uganda, came round to discuss how they might best manage medical risks, admired his bricklaying and co-opted him as medical officer and foreman joiner. He once repaired a dead tumble dryer with a spring from a sun lounger - the machine went on for a further 15 years. After retirement he took up early music and both made and played recorders (and made two bass viols). He loved gardening and his allotment. Choral singing and walking, including long distance trails, were continuing pleasures for him. Mike died on 12 August 2024 from metastatic prostate carcinoma, leaving Harriet, his four daughters: Stephanie, Alex, Rachel and Anna, and 8 grandchildren.
Harriet Mitchison