A. J. Cronin

Archibald Joseph Cronin (1896 to 1981) was a Scottish physician and novelist. He graduated in medicine from the University of Glasgow in 1919, practised in Garelochhead and the Welsh mining town of Tredegar, and in 1924 was appointed Medical Inspector of Mines for Great Britain, publishing reports on coal dust inhalation and lung disease. He later practised on Harley Street in London. His best-known novel, The Citadel (1937), draws on his work as a mines inspector and a London physician and exposes unfairness in British medicine; it is said to have helped inspire the National Health Service. His novella Country Doctor became the long-running BBC series Dr. Finlay's Casebook. He is recorded here as a physician whose fiction shaped public opinion about medicine.