Professor William Mcintosh started in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology at the Johannesburg Hospital and University of the Witwatersrand in 1969, after an internship in Pretoria Hospitals. He became head of the division in 1982 and was the first full professor in over 100 years of Otorhinolaryngology at the University although there were many eminent Otorhinolaryngologist as department heads from the beginning of the 20th century. During this time 17 South African and over 10 international department heads and professors were trained and over 60% of all South African ENT surgeons were training here, most of whom are still in South Africa. Less than 3% of our College of Surgery candidates needed a second attempt at their final fellowship examination. We had 3 PhDs completed and 25 masterates and co-supervised 3 MBA’s. Our undergraduate course record has been even more satisfying with consistent bell curves skewed towards higher marks. Not one student has failed his year because of his ENT training in 30 years. He has since guided another PhD.

Under Prof Mcintosh’s guidance key subspecialties of Otorhinolaryngology were built up. Head and Neck surgery grew from a small clinic and one operating list at the then J.S Strydom Hospital, per fortnight to a speciality doing over 700 major procedures per year with world-class results by the early 1980’s. The division was described by major international Head and Neck Surgeons as the best training centre in the world for head and neck surgery by the end of the 1980’s. A very active skull base surgery unit was established from the late 1970’s which pioneered much of this surgery for the Southern hemisphere, with an especially extensive world experience in the management of head and neck paragangliomas. Facial cosmetic and especially cosmetic nasal surgery expanded from the groundwork of Dr Charles Aronson and was extensively taught until the Johannesburg Hospital demographics and priorities changed. He was a registrar in Neurosurgery in preparation for skull base surgery.

In 1980 he established a 24 place Microsurgery Laboratory, fully equipped with state of the art instrumentation which was used for a number of international courses and was the basis for temporal bone surgery for post graduate surgeons. This was acclaimed by many foreign world medical leaders. It was also used for microsurgery training by other departments. His department started using nasal endoscopy in the early 1980’s as well as rhinomanometry and laryngeal spectography. Inthe 1990’s he started video stroboscopy of the larynx in South Africa.

He was the first doing micro laryngeal surgery and was the first person from 1977 using the Carbon Dioxide laser regularly in South Africa. By 1978 he was assisting most other specialties with this work for many years before it became universal. The first clinic in Neuro-otology and balance disorders clinic in South Africa was manned by him from 1971 as a result of his experience at the Institute of Aviation Medicine and this became part of the training rotation of all post graduates. (His interests were also wider than medicine) He worked at the Institute of Aviation and Military Medicine later MMI (military medical institute) where he worked in an extensive vestibular testing facility (based at NASA) as well as the human centrifuge doing gravitational studies and compression and decompression chambers (doing studies on altitude changes). He is a life member of the South African Society of Aerospace Medicine. He is an honorary member of the Society of Rhinoplastic Surgeons of South Africa.

He was on the executive of the College of Otorhinolaryngology for 25 years, mostly as secretary or chairman and was an examiner or examination convener for this time. He was also on the examiners panel for the FRCS Edinburgh. He was invited to be a founder member of the International Society of Skull Base Surgeons. He was elected a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and to membership of the American Academy of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. The American Society of Head and Neck Surgery, the Society of Head and Neck Surgery of the United States and the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons.

He has the medal for head and neck surgery in the College of Medicines of SA named after him.

He was on the executive for many years of the South African Society of Otorhinolaryngology / Head and Neck Surgery and of Head and Oncology of South Africa and the South Africa Society of Full-time time Medical Specialists. He was a founder member of the South Africa Association of Medical Education and the South African Medical Informatics Group.

He has been on the editorial board and a reviewer of “Allergy” and major international journal since the late 1980’s and been an invited speaker in the United Kingdom, Republic of China, Europe, Australia, Hong Kong and Mainland China. He was registered to practice in the UK from 1972.

He co-authored 5 textbooks and over 40 peer-reviewed publications and educational ENT posters.

He is an honorary professor to the Tri-Services Medical School in Taiwan and in 1981 was the official consultant to the Presidential Family of Taiwan for Otorhinolaryngology and a visiting Professor at all Taiwan Medical Schools. He trained two heads of department in Taiwan.

He has an advanced diploma in Hearing Aid Acoustics from the University of Pretoria.

He has a certificate in foundations of Medico Legal Practice of the University of Cape Town.

He is one of the few South Africans to have been listed for many years in Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in Science and Technology.

He is a senior member of SAMLA, the South African Medico Legal Association.

He became Professor Emeritus in Otorhinolaryngology and head and neck surgery of the University of Witwatersrand in 2004.

He is a life member of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa.

He works as an expert medico legal witness mainly in defense of ENT Colleagues.

He was the runner-up in the PV Tobias award for best teacher in medical faculty an achievement as it is voted for by all medical students from second to sixth year. Their first exposure to his teaching was in the fifth year