• Colebrook was twice married, first in 1914 to Dorothy Scarlett Campbell, and secondly in 1946 to Vera Scovell. There were no children of either marriage.
• Admitted as a student to St Mary’s Hospital Medical School during the South African war in 1900 and qualified as a doctor in 1906
• “He was attracted to that remarkable intellect, Sir Almroth Wright, and he was one of the group of brilliant disciples of this great man which included Sir Alexander Fleming, Major Douglas, John Freeman, John Matthews (“honest John”), R M Fry, Ronald Hare, A B Porteous “Proteus”, and many others who became famous in their time. He was greatly attached to Almroth Wright, went with him to Boulogne in the first world war and worked with him in the old casino there. He advocated for war-wounds of that war, not to use antiseptics, but to use the inborn powers of nature to overcome the septic wounds by means of the patient’s own resistance, using only hypertonics such as hypertonic saline or magnesium sulphate to draw the patient’s own bactericidal serum into the wound, holding that antiseptics did more harm to the patient and his tissues than they did to the germs causing the sepsis.”
• “His great work with Sir Almroth secured his appointment to Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in 1930, and during this time he used ‘Prontosil’ and later its key substance sulphonamide in the treatment of puerperal sepsis and his work brought this disease to an end. It was a triumph of therapeutic ranking with Lister’s in 1867, and he can be regarded as having achieved one of the greatest advances in therapeutics which has probably saved a million lives since it was discovered.”
• “When the second world war came in 1939, he again entered the Army as a Colonel at the age of 56, became bacteriologist to the Army in France and introduced the dusting of wounds with sterile sulphonamide powder, which caused sepsis almost to vanish. This was his second great contribution to medicine and surgery.”
• “His third great contribution came after his return from France in 1940, when he joined a team at the Medical Research Council and worked on the septic element in burns and scalds and helped to produce their well-known Special Report No 240 in 1945. Following this he organised the burns unit at the Accident Hospital at Birmingham.”
• Campaigned for the prevention of burns by measures such as screening fires and non-inflammable clothing
• “Honours in many came to him in due course: Honorary FRCOG in 1944, FRS in 1945, FRCS and Honorary DSc of Birmingham University in 1950. The Blair Bell Medal was presented to him in 1955, and in 1962 the Royal Society of Medicine gave him their Jenner Medal”
• To his intimate friends he was always known as “Coli” just as his great friend and colleague Porteous was known as “Proteus”. Others may remember him as “Elsie” (from his initials LC), with which name he would sign presentation copies of his great life of his dear friend and master Almroth Wright.

[information above: Copyright (c) The Royal College of Surgeons of England]

• Previous work:
  • Department on vaccine therapy from 1907 to 1910
  • Vaccine therapy and tuberculosis from 1910 to 1912
  • 1912 he worked on pneumonia in Rand miners in Johannesburg with Sir Almroth Wright
  • The rest of his time before the first World War was spent on work on the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis with artificial pneumothorax.
  • 1941 he had started work on the infection of burns and its effect on treatment 
  • 1942 the Medical Research Council set up a Burns Unit in Glasgow Royal Infirmary, with Colebrook as Director.
• 1944 – 1948 Director of the MRC Burns Unit at the Birmingham Accident Hospital
• Treatment of puerperal fever with Prontosil – pioneering in antimicrobial chemotherapy
• Post retirement, in collaboration with his wife, he successfully campaigned to reduce the numbers of burns injuries
• Streptococcal infection (which was a major infective hazard at the time in burns patients) could be significantly reduced by tropical chemoprophylaxis with penicillin associated with a number of other measures against cross-infection – this was a landmark in treatment of burns and in the history of hospital infection control. 
• Suggested the appointment of infection control officers within hospitals – this idea led to the formation of the Infection Control Nurse, whose role was to implement recommended procedures and codes of practice. 
• Private member’s parliament bill passed in 1952 “fireguards Act of 1952” – illegal to sell a new gas, electric or oil heater which was not filled with an adequate guard. It was amazing the unpopularity he had to face over what seemed to be such a common sense and humane measure.
• During 1943, a small unit to treat burns and scalds was opened, and Gissane invited Leonard Colebrook (1883-1967) to be its first Director.
• Colebrook was a veteran of the Great War and contributed to a Government-appointed war wounds sub-committee run by Archibald McIndoe during the Second World War.
• Colebrook’s successor was Edward Lowbury (1913-2007), who became bacteriologist at what was later renamed the MRC Industrial Injuries and Burns Research Unit in 1952.
• Colebrook was particularly impressed by the importance of airborne transfer of infection, and he enlisted the collaboration of R. B. Bourdillon in the design of the burns treatment room; from this collaboration stemmed many of the current ideas on the ventilation of surgical operating rooms.
• Designed a dressing station supplied with filtered and conditioned air – this became a prototype for many others throughout the world. 

• after the war Colebrook continued to act as Wright’s assistant in the laboratory, and Wright thought so highly of his junior colleague that he asked him to collaborate in the preparation of the second edition of the technique of the teat and capillary glass tube. The technique of the teat and capillary glass tube, which he published with Wright in 1921, came alive again in the Birmingham Accident Hospital laboratories in the 1940s
• Colebrook published 165 papers and communications.
• Colebrook was a staunch supporter of euthanasia. 
• Colebrook suffered a heart attack in 1967 and died on 29^th September that year.
• Colebrooks interests included motoring, walking, swimming and skiing.
• He was described by various commentators during his life as very lovable, warm and friendly. Also modest with a whimsical sense of humour. He was noted for his great concentration and determination. He was regarded as a good boss, he was demanding and stood no nonsense.
• On 24 September 1914 Colebrook married Dorothy Scarlett Campbell. She died in 1941, and in 1946 he married Vera Scovell. There were no children of either marriage.

Awards/ Achievements:

• He received the Robert Campbell Medal of the Ulster Medical Society in 1937
• Chadwick Lecturer in 1938
• 1939 appointed Col in the RAMC
• Awarded the Fothergill Prize of the Medical Society of London in 1944, in which he was also elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. 
• In 1945 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. 
• He was awarded the Stewart Prize of the British Medical Association in 1948 and became a Member of the Société Philomathique de Paris in the same year. 
• He became Honorary D.Sc. of the University of Birmingham and Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1950 and was awarded the Retzius Medal of the Svenska Lakaresallkapet in Stockholm in the same year. 
• In 1954 he was awarded the Blair Bell Medal of the Royal Society of Medicine
• In 1962 he was awarded the Jenner Medal of the Epidemiological Section of that Society.

• His first formal paper (in collaboration) appeared in 1910, his last (also in collaboration) in 1960

Scientific Work

• Tuberculosis and vaccine therapy (page 15): use of the opsonic index in the control of vaccine therapy. He finds that in many infections rises in temperature are associated with falls in the opsonic index
• The use of arsenicals in the treatment of syphilis (page 15): the original method of injecting salvarsan by the intramuscular route has been abandoned in favour of intravenous injection, which is less painful, quicker, and more certain in its effects. They describe a system of two three-way or one four-way taps and syringes for injection and recommend that if there is no reaction the patient may get up 36 hours after, or if there is a rise in temperature 24 hours after the temperature has returned to normal. They find that the lesions disappear rapidly, especially after intravenous injection of the drug; fresh lesions sometimes appear after intramuscular injection.
• Pneumococcal infections 
• Meningococcal infections : stimulated by outbreaks of meningococcal infection among soldiers in crowded barracks, examined a number of persons in contact with cases of meningococcal infection, and found that carriers were about twelve times as common as cases. It was therefore impracticable to isolate carriers; was it practicable to clear meningococci from the air-passages? Local treatment with silver iodide seemed hopeful, as meningococci were absent the day after treatment; but on the second day after treatment they were present in large numbers.
• Wound infections 
• Puerperal fever
• Burns 
• Actinomycosis: He provides diagnostic criteria for the various diseases and the associated organisms, and comments that he does not think that the Actinomyces normally associated with human actinomycosis is derived from grass and soil; it is much more likely to be a normal inhabitant of the mouth.
• Vaccine therapy and bactericidal power)
• Mainly technical papers 
• Historical papers 
• Euthanasia