A lifetime of healing and heart
AMA SA Life Member Dr Leon Pitchon is one of three South Australian doctors with longstanding ties to AMA SA recognised in this year’s Australia Day Honours list. His story is one of skill, service and deep personal devotion.
Dr Leon Pitchon’s fascination with the arts started early. As a child in Cairo, where he spent the first 14 years of his life, he once appeared in a school play with Omar Sharif.
‘I call it my claim to fame,’ Dr Pitchon jokes. ‘He was a couple of years ahead of me at school and, of course, the senior boys didn’t talk to the juniors – I’m sure it’s still the same now.’
The young Leon and his family migrated to Adelaide in 1949, after the Second World War. He completed high school and then went on to study medicine at the University of Adelaide, graduating in 1959. Eager to advance his training in plastic surgery, he moved to London, where he earned fellowships from both the Royal College of Surgeons of England (FRCS) and Edinburgh (FRCS Edin).
‘I decided on plastic surgery because I’d always been handy and liked doing delicate things,’ Dr Pitchon says. ‘It felt like the right kind of work for me.’
He went on to train at Roehampton and East Grinstead – two of the UK’s leading centres for plastic and burns surgery. But it was a short visit to the Royal Derbyshire Hospital that would have the biggest impact on his life. It was there that he met a young anaesthetist named Gill, who would become the ‘love of his life’.
‘It was a chance encounter, I suppose,’ Dr Pitchon says. ‘When I left Derbyshire and bid farewell to the doctors, I said to Gill, “If you’re ever in London, let me know.” I got a call from her about three weeks later saying she was coming for a visit the next weekend. It just so happened that I wasn’t on duty.’
That was it. They married soon after, and in 1967 Dr Pitchon and his new wife returned to Adelaide. He jokes that Gill was a ‘ten‑pound Pom’, as the pair had ‘no money’.
A few years after his return, Dr Pitchon received a fellowship from the Royal Australian College of Surgeons by election rather than examination, in recognition of his experience and reputation. At the time, he was one of only three practising plastic surgeons in South Australia.
He also quickly realised that the Royal Adelaide Hospital was missing a crucial facility: a burns unit. He took it upon himself to establish one and went on to run it for the next 12 years.
‘I’ve always wanted to help people and do my best,’ Dr Pitchon says. ‘Like all doctors, we want to help people and save lives. That’s what we’re trained to do – it’s our Hippocratic Oath.’
Dr Pitchon has been made a Member of the Order of Australia not only for his significant service to medicine, but also for his contribution to the arts through philanthropy. His charitable donations include support for the Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Adelaide Central School of Art – all made in honour of Gill.
‘I wanted to memorialise my darling wife, who died six years ago of cancer,’ Dr Pitchon says. ‘We were very close – only 52 years together – not enough time.’
Dr Pitchon has also established the Drs Leon and Gill Pitchon Endowed Memorial Fund in Cancer Research – a perpetual gift to the South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute at the University of Adelaide, and a lasting tribute to his wife.
