John Calder died in 1988, some two years after his retirement from the Royal Perth hospital, where he had spent the majority of his years in Perth as Physician to the Diabetic Unit. He was born in Edinburgh on June 8 1919, and attended the Academy there whence he graduated dux and proceeded to Oxford to study classics emerging with an honours degree. As a mature student he returned to Edinburgh to study medicine graduating in 1945, and entering the Navy serving in the area of Malaya. Whilst abroad he completed studies for an MD and returned to Edinburgh in 1949, to obtain membership of the Edinburgh College.

Marriage to an Australian nurse in Singapore influenced his decision to emigrate to Perth where he entered general practice for a short period of time and then teamed up with the redoubtable Bruce Hunt, at first as a general physician in private practice and at the Royal Perth hospital but subsequently, as his commitments increased and his expertise broadened, confining himself exclusively to the treatment of diabetes. In this arena he excelled. Of quiet, thoughtful temperament, he was able to defuse the natural anxieties and bewildering mysteries to which diabetic patients are so frequently disposed. He soon recognised to what extent this dependency and fear were a consequence of ignorance and his whole clinical life was directed toward the enlargement of understanding and self-reliance in the individual diabetic.

A memorial to this commitment may be found in his book 'Diabetes: Basic Principles of Treatment' for the person with the insulin dependent variety of the disease. It exemplifies his gift for simplicity and directness of communication, and has been widely and gratefully read by a generation of diabetics as it contains, like 'The Diabetic Life' of the late Robin Lawrence, unassailable and perpetual truths. Although working closely with the ebullient Hunt, he was never in his thrall and followed his own bent pioneering a 'free' diabetic diet when carbohydrate restriction and obsessive 'portions' were the rage. In this sense he would sometimes seem almost too casual but his canny perception would single out the patient in whom a firmer hand was required.

Not long after his arrival in Perth he sat and passed the examination for Membership of the Australasian College, and some 12 years later was awarded Fellowship. From 1954 to 1956, he was a member of the Western Australia State Committee. He was tall, quietly spoken, with a soft Scottish burr. Always casually dressed, his manner and approach were designed to disarm and instill confidence. There was a strong sense of humour, a love of birds, animals and flowers and deep camaraderie with his few chosen friends. His wife and two daughters survived his death in Oxford in 1988, where he was, typically enough, researching a book on the history of medicine.