Eric Leo Susman was born in Sydney on 7 March 1896. After leaving Sydney Church of England Grammar School, he enlisted in the First AIF as a private in September 1914 and was wounded at Gallipoli in the following year. He rejoined his unit after ten weeks in hospital in Egypt and remained at Gallipoli until the evacuation. His medical career was again interrupted by the 1939-45 War when he served as surgeon lieutenant commander on HMAS Westralia.

Susman's medical curriculum vitae was not exceptional. He entered the faculty of medicine at the University of Sydney after he was repatriated in 1916, graduated in 1921 and served his residency at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. In 1923 he went to London where he was house physician to Sir James Purves-Stewart at Westminster and West London Hospitals. This fostered his natural interest in neurology, which he pursued by working at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square. There he learned the complexities of clinical neurology from none less than Holmes, Collier, Wilson and Walshe. He was admitted to Membership of the Royal College of Physicians of London, in 1924 and at the end of the following year commenced practice in Sydney.

He was appointed an honorary assistant physician to RPAH in 1926 and an honorary physician in 1945. He remained closely associated with RPAH until the end of his life and was chairman of the medical board of this hospital for three years. Neurology remained his special interest and, at a time when specialisation was not favoured in Sydney, he instituted neurological clinics at RPAH and the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children. He was the honorary director of the RSL Northcott Neurological Diagnostic Centre. Eric Susman and (Sir) Kenneth Noad were the first neurologists in Sydney.

He became a foundation Fellow of the RACP in 1938 and was a member of the NSW state committee of the College from 1952 to 1958. He delivered the GE Rennie Memorial Lecture on The Neurology of Chronic Alcoholism in 1956.

He had independent means and did not strive to build up a busy private practice, which included both neurology and general medicine. He once told me: `I may not be the best physician in Sydney, but I am the most expensive'. He collected an excellent library of neurological classics including the original works of Hughlings Jackson, Gowers and Charcot, but was less interested in reading current medical journals or in writing and publishing medical papers. When he retired as senior physician of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital he presented to the board the sum of 5000 pounds for the purpose of establishing and equipping a modern clinical library.

Whereas Eric Susman's medical life was not exceptional, his personality certainly was and endeared him to all his colleagues and friends. He was known as `Gus', a nickname he had acquired in his youth as a boy scout. No one who had the good fortune of being associated with him could have forgotten this remarkable, witty and eccentric man, who infected his companions with his boisterous enthusiasm and joi de vivre. He was, at times, flamboyant and regarded himself as an exhibitionistic extrovert. These personality traits were apparent at an early age and they continued throughout his life and were hardly suppressed when he was ill. When he started practice in Sydney in 1925, he was seen striding along Macquarie Street in a narrow bowler hat, striped trousers and yellow gloves. His mastery of English and his sharp, quick wit created many remarks still recalled and recounted amid laughter by his friends and acquaintances. When some of his colleagues at RPAH had an informal discussion about the age of consent, Gus brought the seriousness of the matter to an end by saying: `I don't really mind if they raise or lower the age, as long as they make it compulsory at twenty-one'. He was able to sum up the deficiencies of a situation or of a person with one devastating phrase, but his criticism was overshadowed by his kindness and loyalty.

Gus was respected and loved by his colleagues and students and had friends in all walks of life, who recognised that his personality had many endearing qualities and that his exhibitionistic, extroverted behaviour was only a facade for a sensitive, honest man who was always a generous, true and loyal friend. His tremendous enjoyment of life was transmitted to all in contact with him. He enjoyed art, painting, music and the theatre, was a connoisseur of wine and an excellent cook. He went to no end of trouble to find the best food and once wrote to a publican at Albury several months before we arrived there and ordered the Murray cod we wanted for dinner. He was an expert at all card games and enjoyed the chance of outwitting the friends with whom he played regularly. He never married, but was hardly ever without female companionship; ladies were enchanted by his charming and witty behaviour.

I met Gus when I was an RMO at RPAH in 1946-47 and, like most of my colleagues, fell under his spell. His generosity in helping all young graduates was unequalled. He was an excellent teacher, interested more in the bizarre and esoteric cases, and his manner of presentation made it easy to remember even the more dreary scientific facts. He likened the atrophic brain of a dementing patient to a shrivelled walnut in its shell. His postgraduate clinical demonstrations were always well attended and he had the audience spellbound when he presented a boy with self-induced photic epilepsy. The EEG machine was in the lecture room, the electrodes were applied, but the boy was then overcome by all the attention and ran out of the room closely pursued by Gus. One of the honorary physicians in the audience exclaimed: `What a superb demonstration of Susmania'.

Gus never mentioned his trigeminal neuralgia or his terminal cardiac illness to his friends and died suddenly in his sixty-third year on 10 June 1959. He will never be forgotten by his many friends in all walks of life and the Susman Library at RPAH and Susman Prize at the RACP remain as a memorial to an exceptional and generous man.