John Studd

Who is John Studd?

John Winston Studd is a British gynaecologist and an academic and medical historian. He was educated at the Royal Hospital School and at Birmingham University Medical School. After qualification he went to work in Bulawayo for several years and then returned to Birmingham where he took his MD in renal disease in pregnancy. In 1969 he started the first menopause clinic in Europe. He later worked in Salisbury, Rhodesia with Hugh Philpott with whom he devised and modified partogram creating action lines to diagnose early labour complications. He also published further work on the mechanism of labour, the effect of epidural anaesthesia on labour, and the complication of sickle cell disease in labour.

He extended his interests on hormone therapy for women, particularly relating to osteoporosis and hormone responsive depression. He was a founder of the National Osteoporosis Society. He was the first to show in randomised controlled trials that transdermal oestrogens are extremely effective in the treatment of postnatal depression, premenstrual depression, and perimenopausal depression.