SALISBURY'S former 'flying doctor' retires from medicine today.

Regarded as one of the most eminent names in his field of medicine in the country, Dr Alastair Lack has been consultant anaesthetist at Salisbury District Hospital for 27 years.

He was the youngest doctor to pass the Final Fellowship Examination of the Royal College of Anaesthetists and has written two books on improving the quality of medical care within the profession.

In 1987, he founded the Society for Computing and Technology in Anaesthesia, becoming its first chairman and later its president.

He was elected president of the World Federation of Societies for Technology in Anaesthesia a decade later and was elected to the council of the RCA, where he has chaired the professional standards committee for the last three years.

After qualifying, he took further qualifications in computing and medical engineering.

"This was when the health service was expected to advance with technology and senior doctors were sent off to do degrees in other disciplines," Dr Lack said from his home in Coombe Bissett, where he lives with his wife, Maggie.

He has put the extra skills to good use and is responsible for designing software for the RCA for recording juniors' training, and wrote the first computerised waiting lists systems for Salisbury in the 1980s.

He also invented the Lack co-axial breathing system for use in anaesthesia.

Before taking up his post in Salisbury in 1974, Dr Lack spent some time in America as professor of anaesthesia at Stanford, where one of his two daughters (he also has a son) was born.

He was chair of the Salisbury District Hospital's medical committee for six years, representing medical staff on the district health authority, and was one of three key players who worked with architects to organise and design the new Salisbury District Hospital.

A waiting list scoring system, which he pioneered in Salisbury, revised the old health care priority system based on time waiting and incorporated disease progression, physical pain, psychological distress and dependence.

He also struck a blow for the motorist when, three years ago, he took on the wheel clampers at Salisbury station car park and won compensation after the security company wrongly clamped his vehicle.

But it is as the man who started the flying doctor service locally and was its first and only operative from 1976 until 1986 that Dr Lack caught the public imagination and will be remembered with most affection.

"I believe it was set up by GPs in Yorkshire, frustrated by the time it took to get doctors to the scene of an accident," he said.

"We had no paramedics in Salisbury then and it was quite obvious that people were dying for want of medical care before they got to hospital."

Using first his own motorbike and then his own car, which he equipped himself, he put himself on call 24 hours a day for 10 years, responding to accidents all over south Wiltshire.