The final doctor to treat Queen Elizabeth II before her death had an upsetting realisation as he spent time with the monarch, according to a royal author.
Dr Douglas James Allan Glass signed the late Queen’s death certificate after 34 years of service as the Apothecary to Her Majesty’s Household at Balmoral.
Royal documents reveal that the doctor treated the monarch for ailments including mobility problems and a debilitating bout of Covid-19 in the months before her death. He explained that the queen’s advanced age and deteriorating health meant that her family and doctors were braced for the worst for several months before her death.
“It was expected and we were quite aware of what was going to happen,” Glass told Gyles Brandreth in his biography, Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait.
As the Queen’s illness stretched on, her GP’s mounting concerns became a sad inevitability, according to the Daily Express. On the day of her death, Dr Glass “visited again and determined Elizabeth was stable but coming towards the end of her life”, says Robert Hardman in his book Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story.
When the Queen was finally pronounced deceased at 3.10pm on September 8, 2022, Dr Glass identified the cause of death simply as “old age” on her formal death certificate.
However, long before the Queen’s sad passing, the doctor already played a key role in protecting the health of the royal family.
In 1999, Dr Glass treated Princess Margaret when she badly scalded her feet in the bath while on holiday in Mustique. The royal spent a long period recovering at Balmoral before eventually returning South. Her private secretary Lord Ullswater wrote to Dr Glass on behalf of the Royal Family.
He said: “All of us would wish to thank you and your nurses for your untiring support and attention while she was at Balmoral over the last month or more.”
Dr Glass is also understood to have provided invaluable support during another dramatic incident at Balmoral in May 1993, when the Queen Mother nearly choked on a fish bone lodged in her throat.
The royal ultimately underwent surgery at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary to remove the bone. It was the third such incident, after previous scares at Buckingham Palace in 1982 and Balmoral in 1986.
When he was not treating the royal family, the loyal doctor worked as a GP in the Aberdeenshire village of Braemar, around nine miles from Balmoral Castle. It is understood that he served the community as part of the Braemar Health Clinic from 1986 until at least July 2020.
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