Margaret was the youngest child of five. She was bought up in a very religious home. Her father was a strict Plymouth Brethren, a sect that broke away from the established church and concentrated very much on the words of the Bible. They had a high following among the fishing folk of NE Scotland.
Brought up in Stanley Street, Aberdeen, near the centre of the city, Margaret was educated at the Central School in Aberdeen (now the Aberdeen Academy). She was Dux or the leading scholar for four years and left in 1939. Aged 16 she was accepted at Aberdeen University to read Medicine and graduated MB, ChB when she was 21, one of the youngest doctors to do so. She won First Prize in Surgery. She went to work in the Aberdeen Sick Children's Hospital. In these days, the children there were given heroin for post-operative pain instead of morphine. She was curious as to how it quietened them and got a nurse to give her a shot - she was violently sick! She then became a House Surgeon at the Maternity Hospital before going to St. James Hospital in Balham, London, where she worked under the brilliant Norman Tanner. She then tried for her FRCS (Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons) in Edinburgh University. She was one of only 20 women who obtained the Fellowship before 1950.
She went to the Ludhiana Christian Medical College in the Punjab, India in 1948. It was there that she became known as Dr. Meg (in England as an FRCS would have been known as Miss Ingram). In 1952 she visited the hill station of Kampilong on the borders of Tibet and met her husband to be, the journalist George Patterson another Plymouth Brethren. They were married in Kings College Chapel in Aberdeen on 12 Sep 1953. They returned to Kampilong in 1953 and from there she went to The Tea Planters' Hospital in Darjeeling.
Next stop was Hong Kong and it was there in the Tung Wah Hospital that she came across many who took opiates to drown out their terrible lives. She studied the electro-acupuncture that was used in the hospital for other reasons, and noticed t he extraordinary effect it had on removing the desire for drugs whether it was cigarettes, opium or alcohol. From that moment on she dedicated her life to helping drug addicts and developing her NET treatment box.
She returned to London in 1973. Then followed years of development work more akin to an electronic engineer than a surgeon and the seeking of funds to carry on the work. During this period she was meeting with all sorts of famous people from (Sir) Richard Branson to George Soros, all the while experimenting with her treatment on anyone who had money, usually pop stars such as Boy George, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend. Whilst treating Boy George at Richard Branson's home in the country, the media suddenly heard about it and descended on the house. "It was impossible to treat him in such circumstances, and we slipped away one evening, after dark, through the field at the back of the house. I was wearing only open sandals, and the fields were filled with thorns and thistles, so Richard insisted I ride on his back!"
Likewise it is impossible to give a real flavour of her life in so short a summary. It is a life of staggering from pinnacle to pit, almost penniless throughout, whilst dealing with prejudice, swindlers and all sorts, on her way to the production of her revolutionary treatment for addiction. I hope you will seek out her autobiography in the second-hand bookshops. It is called Dr. Meg by Meg Patterson and was published by Nelson Word Ltd. in 1994. The photographs illustrated here are taken from that book.

Some of their other books are as follows:

The Power Factor by George and Meg Patterson (Nelson Word Ltd)
The Paradise Factor by George and Meg Patterson (Nelson Word Ltd)
The China Paradox by George Patterson (Nelson Word Ltd)
Tibetan Journey by George Patterson
Patterson of Tibet by George Patterson
Peking versus Delhi by George Patterson
Requiem for Tibet by George Patterson
Christianity in Communist China by George Patterson
Hooked? NET: The New Approach to Drug Cure by Meg Patterson (Faber & Faber)
The Addicted: The Revolutionary NeuroElectric Therapy by Meg Patterson (Nelson Word Ltd)
NET Treatment Manual by Meg Patterson

Links:
To purchase the book "Patterson of Tibet"