David Paton, Creator of Flying Eye Hospital, Dies at 94

Science|David Paton, Creator of the Flying Eye Hospital, Dies at 94

David Paton, an idealistic and innovative ophthalmologist who converted a United Airlines jet into a flying hospital that took surgeons to developing countries to operate on patients and educate local doctors, died on April 3 at his home in Reno, Nev. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by his son, Townley.

The son of a prominent New York eye surgeon whose patients included the shah of Iran and the financier J. Pierpont Morgan’s horse, Dr. Paton (pronounced PAY-ton) was teaching at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the early 1970s when he became discouraged by increasing cases of preventable blindness in far-flung places.

“More eye doctors were needed,” he wrote in his memoir, “Second Sight: Views From an Eye Doctor’s Odyssey” (2011), “but equally important was the need to beef up the existing doctors’ medical education.”

But how?

He considered shipping trunks of equipment — almost the way a circus would — but that presented logistical challenges. He pondered the possibility of using a medical ship like the one that the humanitarian group Project Hope sent around the world. That was too slow for him.

“Shortly after the first moon landing in 1969, thinking big was becoming a reality,” Dr. Paton wrote.

And then a moonshot idea struck him: “Could an aircraft be the answer? A large enough aircraft could be converted into an operating theater, a teaching classroom and all the necessary facilities.”