Tony Smith, who has died aged 73, was the leading popular writer of health books for 30 years and, unlike many in the trade, his writing was reliable. He was medical correspondent of the Times for 11 years, and consultant adviser to the short-lived Times Health Supplement. He wrote many Family Doctor booklets for the British Medical Association, sold on display stands in pharmacies. He went on to write for Reader's Digest books, and then for Dorling Kindersley.
Extraordinarily, he was equally prolific simultaneously in his day job as deputy editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ). He broadened the narrow remit of medical journalism to cover wider aspects of health.
Tony was born into a hard-up family; his father was a shop steward in the Jaguar car factory in Coventry. Tony was evacuated to Warwick for five years during the war. His parents encouraged their sons to win scholarships to Bablake grammar school and to university: Tony went to University College, Oxford, on an open scholarship to read law but changed to medicine, which his brother - who became an international authority on rehabilitation medicine - was studying. Tony played bridge for Oxford and was equally good at poker.
He did his clinical training at the London Hospital, qualifying in 1959, and worked as a junior doctor in hospitals around London. His anti-establishment attitudes - he refused to look after one consultant's private patients - did not endear him to his bosses, which cannot have helped when he failed the membership examination for the Royal College of Physicians. He did not enjoy clinical medicine and with a colleague, Stephen Lock, tried medical journalism. Lock left medical practice to work for the Lancet and when he became BMJ editor, encouraged Tony to apply for a vacancy. Tony remained there until he retired in 1990, aged 65.
He was astoundingly prolific. "He could do in a morning as much work as most people do in a week," said his colleague Linda Beecham. "He could write a perfect editorial in a few minutes." He would say: "The first millions words are the worst." He also had the knack of reading a complicated medical paper and reducing it to four sentences of lucid prose, and for many years wrote most of Minerva, the BMJ's much-imitated page of short reports and oddball information. He breathed new life into the journal and was unflappable in the face of weekly deadlines.
In 1971 he became medical correspondent of the Times. Here he widened the scope of articles from the narrow "a doctor says" to encompass topics such as how to live with a colostomy, how surgeons and patients can help each other, battered babies, posthumous diagnoses of historical figures, and the pros and cons of hormone replacement therapy. He was, said Lock, "a natural writer - fast, fluent and knowledgeable". He was sacked by the editor, Harold Evans, in 1982 in favour of Dr Thomas Stuttaford, who still saw patients. His disappointment was palpable.
Tony turned his surplus energies to writing the BMA's Family Doctor booklets. He masterminded the Reader's Digest Family Health Guide (1972), and, for Penguin, The Medical Risks of Life (1977). He wrote and edited other home advice books including Family Doctor (1986), Practical Family Health (1990), Drugs and Medication (1991), The Complete Family Health Encyclopedia (1995), Guide to Healthy Living (1993) with Dr Stephen Carroll, and Adolescence, The Survival Guide for Parents and Teenagers (1994) with Elizabeth Fenwick. This list is not exhaustive.
The books sold thousands and made him rich. He enjoyed the good life, but remained a committed socialist who deplored Thatcher and Blair equally. He could be naive: he would tolerate no criticism of Mao's China and believed the propaganda that it had eliminated flies and sexually transmitted diseases. He was loved by colleagues, and women adored him - he was handsome, laid-back, charming and a stylish dresser, with a wonderful speaking voice.
He developed Parkinson's disease in his 60s. In the middle stages, he managed with helpers and, in August 2007, had himself admitted to a nursing home in Suffolk. He disappeared in June 2008 and a full search with heat-seeking instruments and river-dragging failed to find his body, which was recently discovered by walkers in nearby woods. Foul play was not suspected.
He married Evelyn Adey, also a doctor, in 1958. They divorced in 1981, but remained friends. He had started married life on a houseboat on the river Lea but soon moved to a detached house in Blackheath, south-east London, and later a regency terraced house near Regent's Park and an old rectory in Suffolk. After he divorced, he had a flat in London, and spent his last years with his Norwegian partner, Inge; they commuted between their two countries.
He is survived by two daughters and a son.
• Antony John Smith, medical writer, born 4 December 1934; found dead 1 March 2009
