Dr. John Stewart
- Member of the first medical class of graduates from the UWI and not the UCWI.
- At the UWI he received honours in Anatomy and Physiology in 1964 and the Clinical Gold Medal; distinction in medicine and therapeutics, honours in surgery and obstetrics and gynaecology in 1969.
- One of his most notable works is FOCAL PERIPHERAL NEUROPATHIES, published in 1988
- He left Jamaica after graduating and went to Britain where he did further training in internal medicine at the University of Wales in Cardiff. He obtained the M.R.C.P. (U.K.) in 1972 and started training in neurology. However the zeal for travel supervened and he went to the University of Nairobi, Kenya as a lecturer in medicine for two years. There he teamed up with two neurosurgeons and a radiologist to form a ‘neuro team’. They discovered a high prevalence of congenital anomalies of the craniovertebral junction in two of the large Kenyan tribes and studied and published the findings establishing the nature and surgical treatment of this otherwise disabling disorder. He then entered the neurology programme at McGill University and completed that training in 1978. In 1989 he obtained the Detweiler Travel Fellowship and the WHO Travel Fellowship (Autonomic Laboratory at the Mayo Clinic and the Neurology Research Laboratory at the Middlesex Hospital in London, U.K.). He was appointed consultant/staff physician at the Montreal General Hospital and assistant professor with McGill University. After fifteen years he moved to the Montreal Neurological Hospital and Institute and was promoted to full professor. The focus of his career has been clinical practice in a university hospital setting, teaching and mentoring students and residents, doing clinical research into disorders of the neuromuscular and autonomic nervous systems and clinical administration. He established an Autonomic Testing Laboratory at the Montreal Neurological Hospital. He has had several leadership positions including Director of Clinical Neurological Services, Montreal General Hospital, Chairman of the McGill University Residency Training Programme, Chairman of the Council of Physicians of the Montreal Neurological Hospital and Neurologist-in-Chief at the Montreal Neurological Hospital. He has been invited to give numerous lectures, talks and presentations in the Caribbean and all over the world and has published in journals and peer-reviewed journals, done book chapters, publications, non-medical articles and conference presentations.