Georgiana Bonser

Early career

Following an appointment as Manchester Royal Infirmary's first woman house surgeon, though discouraged from pursuing a surgical career, Bonser took up a post as anatomy demonstrator under John Stopford. In 1923, the year after joining the British Medical Association (BMA), she gained her MD with distinction, and became president of the women's union at Manchester University. In the same year she earned the university's first Dickinson travelling fellowship, with which she chose to study at the Pasteur Institute, Paris, for a year. It was there, that she possibly became interested in genetics. It was in Paris that she met Kenneth John Bonser, an architect whom she later married in 1926 in Leeds.

Lung, breast, and testicular cancer

Bonser was appointed to research cancer at the Department of Experimental Pathology and Cancer Research, Leeds University, by Richard Douglas Passey in 1927. That year, after Passey returned from a meeting in Manchester, which reported increasing cases of lung cancer in that city, he asked Bonser to investigate cancers of the respiratory tract in Leeds. Her paper on the topic in 1929, found a general increase in cases of lung cancer, but no particular rise in Leeds. She then looked at the possibility of hereditary factors playing a role in causing breast tumours in mice, and simultaneously followed-up siblings of a group of people treated for breast cancer. She persuaded Passey to use strains of inbred mice to investigate carcinogenic effects of soot in York's blast furnace workers. Her findings of triphenylethylene inducing testicular cancers in mice were published in the early 1940s. Her introduction of these mice and laboratory approach to research led to criticism from the senior surgeon at St Mark's, John Lockhart-Mummery, who was secretary of the British Empire Cancer Campaign and preferred a clinical approach. To this, Bonser responded:

No-one would deny that Mendelian laws are as applicable to the human as to the tall and short peas which Mendel used in his original experiments. Yet Mendel could not have formulated the laws if he had not studied an obvious character in a quickly growing plant. Similarly, in the study of breast cancer the use of inbred mice is an invaluable aid to the elucidation of the problem in man.

Bladder cancer

With her colleagues, Bonser investigated how aromatic amines worked and whether they could cause cancer. She was asked to study data on bladder cancer in dye workers at ICI, Huddersfield. In the 1930s she led early investigations into whether some of these chemicals in the dyeing industry could cause cancer in bladders. At the time, attempts to cause bladder cancer in animals with chemicals from the dye industry or urine of workers affected with bladder cancer had been unsuccessful, despite knowing an association between bladder cancer and the dye industry since the late nineteenth century. Assisted by chemists D. B. Clayson and J. W. Jull, she was helped by the surgical skills of urologist Leslie Pyrah. Together they studied the effects of the dye precursor 2-Naphthylamine and other aromatic chemicals with cancer causing properties. For example, by implanting 2-Naphthylamine directly into bladders in paraffin pellets, it was shown that the compound did not cause cancer directly but required metabolic transformation to activate it as a carcinogen.

Her work on this, published later, showed that 2-Naphthylamine could induce bladder cancer in dogs, hepatomas in mice, hyperplasia of the bladder lining in rabbits, and papillomas of the bladder in rats. Some of the benign tumours she found have later been found to be precancerous conditions. She remained supported by Passey and pathologist Matthew John Stewart, and became good friends with Stewart's wife, Clara.

Later career

In 1942, after the department of cancer research closed, Bonser was appointed morbid anatomist to Pontefract General Hospital. In 1948, three years after taking the MRCP and six years before being elected fellow of the College, she moved to St James's Hospital, Leeds, where she continued as a part-time consultant until she retired. In the same year she gained a permanent teaching post at the Department of Experimental Pathology and Cancer Research. Between 1948 and 1952 she reported on a series of new cases of lung cancer at three hospitals; Aberdeen, Leeds and Birmingham. Her findings noted that males in urban areas had a higher rate of lung cancer, but when females were exposed to the same industrial hazards, they were also more likely to develop lung cancer. In 1949, she chaired the committee of the then new Pathological Museum at Leeds.

In 1952 Wilhelm Hueper invited Bonser to speak to the National Cancer Institute. In 1953, just over 30 years after joining the British Medical Association, Bonser became the first woman chairman of the organisation's Leeds Division. In 1955 Bonser pointed out that "since the introduction of the regulations for the control of asbestos dust in 1931, the amount of exposure of the workers to dust has been enormously reduced".

In addition to several lectures Bonser delivered in the United States, in 1956 the Indian Government invited her to address Mumbai's Cancer Research Centre. The following year the Ministry of Health chose her to sit on their committee that looked at the risk of cancers from food additives and preservatives. Two years later, Bonser was the only woman scientist among 25 experts contributing to an international symposium on cancer, held in Israel.

Between 1959 and 1960, Bonser served as president of the Medical Women's Federation. She then co-authored Human and Experimental Breast Cancer, published in 1961. In it she gave a good description of types of blunt duct adenosis, a controversial term for a type of breast lesion. Also, in the early 1960s she investigated several artificial food dyes and advised government on which ones could cause cancer. Following her retirement in 1963, Bonser continued to be involved at her university's cancer research centre and the breast clinic in Leeds General Infirmary. In 1965 she was the only woman member of a sub-committee of 22, appointed to look at toxic chemicals in agriculture and storage of food. Bonser delivered the Goulstonian Lecture in 1966, and in 1967, she delivered the Ernestine Henry Lecture.

Death

Bonser died on 9 June 1979, at the age of 81.