A SURGEON who founded a world-first unit for the elderly at the Cowley Road Hospital has been added to the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Geriatrician Lionel Zelick Cosin is among 112 men and women who shaped British life added to the new edition of the dictionary.

The surgeon, who died in 1994, began his Oxford career at Littlemore Hospital. After graduating in 1933 he took a job there, which allowed him to study for his Royal College of Surgeons exams.

After passing, he worked for several years in Essex, treating war casualties and looking after chronically sick patients.

In 1950 he was invited to develop a geriatric unit at the Cowley Road Hospital, in Oxford, and he stayed on as director until 1976. He won a worldwide reputation through his work and his department trained many of today’s leading geriatricians.

He also designed and opened the Oxford Day Hospital in 1957, the first of its kind in the country, which allowed elderly patients to keep their independence.

This was called his most original idea and people came to Oxford from all over the world to meet him and listen to his seminars.

The Lionel Cosin Day Unit still exists at the John Radcliffe Hospital and there is also a Cosin Close in East Oxford.

On choosing him for a biography, the dictionary’s publication editor Philip Carter said: “Lionel Cosin was a pioneer of geriatric medicine who transformed the practice of care for the elderly.

“His life was rooted in East Oxford, where he is commemorated but his innovations are also of lasting national and international importance.

“In a society in which people are living longer, there is now growing interest in the origins and history of elderly care.

“By including Mr Cosin’s biography in the DNB we hope to highlight his contribution in creating what’s now a key area of medical practice.”

A section of his life story, in the new edition, explains that after setting up the geriatric unit at the Cowley Road Hospital he reduced the average length of stay from 286 to 51 days, leaving only seven per cent of patients still in hospital six months after admission.

His unit treated five times more “elderly confused” patients than the local mental hospital.

He married Pamela Headlam in 1941 and fathered a son and daughter.

Following this month’s update, the dictionary includes 54,505 articles telling the life stories of 59,655 people.

It has been compiled by 14,097 writers and has 70 million words. No living person is included in the dictionary, which is funded by the British Academy and Oxford University Press.