Alex Paton (physician)

Alexander Paton (2 March 1924 – 12 September 2015) was a British gastroenterologist, writer and postgraduate dean for North-West London hospitals, who was a specialist in alcohol misuse.

In 1945, while studying medicine at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, he was one of the London medical students who volunteered to go to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp shortly after its liberation by British troops, to assist in administering the "starvation diet" to the severely malnourished and dying inmates.

Paton was one of the first intake of doctors into the British National Health Service and later became a registrar to Sheila Sherlock, a recognised authority on liver disease. In 1959, he was appointed consultant physician to Dudley Road Hospital, Birmingham, where he taught medical students for the MRCP, established an endoscopy service and began a 20-year study of the effects of alcoholic liver cirrhosis.

He later held consultant positions at the St Ann's Hospital and the Prince of Wales Hospital in North London, and became the first chairman of the medical committee of Alcohol Concern. His book, ABC of Alcohol, went through four editions.