Ungley's brother, H. Gordon Ungley, became a surgeon and
F.R.C.S. Their parents were an accountant Charles Ungley and his wife Grace Daisy Eleanor, née Goody. After secondary education at
Archbishop Holgate's School, Charles C. Ungley matriculated at Durham University College of Medicine (now called
Newcastle University Medical School). There he graduated
MB BS in 1925 and
MD in 1927. After further education at Durham University College of Medicine and resident appointments at
Newcastle upon Tyne's
Royal Victoria Infirmary, At the beginning of his career, Ungley investigated neurology. His first paper was published in 1929, as coauthor with
Moses M. Suzman (1904–1994), in the journal
Brain. In 1930 Ungley was awarded a
Rockefeller fellowship, which enabled him to study at
Harvard Medical School and its teaching hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. There he was encouraged by
William Bosworth Castle to study
pernicious anaemia with therapeutic approaches using liver extracts, as well as purified vitamin B12. 8th, and 10th. During WW II he served as a surgeon commander with the
Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (R.N.V.R.), first at
Aberdeenshire's
Royal Naval Hospital and then at
Durban. There he did research on
immersion foot and other medical problems related to prolonged immersion in seawater. Because of his hospital work and his own health problems from essential hypertension, his research studies were incomplete but were eventually published in 1956 with coauthors
Robert A. McCance,
Elsie M. Widdowson, and Surgeon Commander J. W. L. Crossfil,
R.N. (who retired in 1957). In 1947 Ungley was appointed full physician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary. He gave essential help to
E. Lester Smith's British team in their isolation and
crystallisation of vitamin B12 in 1948. Ungley determined dose-response relationships for
pernicious anaemia cases treated with the purified vitamin B12. He was the first to demonstrate dramatic remissions in the cases treated with massive doses (3,000 micrograms) of orally administered vitamin B12. The research of Ungley and his colleagues on the
nutritional anaemias contributed to understanding
megaloblastic anaemia in cases of pregnant women with
folate deficiency and/or
vitamin B12 deficiency. He also did significant research on the effects of
vitamin C deficiency on wound healing. In 1937 Durham University College of Medicine joined Armstrong College to form King's College, Durham (which in 1963 became the
University of Newcastle upon Tyne). At the medical school of King's College, Durham, Ungley taught medical students. In 1952 at King's College, Durham, he started a scheme that took medical students and enlisted four general practitioners (one each with an urban, semiurban, small-town, or rural practice). Each of the four general practioneers took a medical student for one day each week to show the features of general practice. This scheme continued after Ungley's death in 1958. Ungley enjoyed the hobbies of golf and piloting
gliders until worsening health problems forced him to abandon those two hobbies, but he still enjoyed relaxation as an amateur oil painter. Upon his death in 1958 he was survived by his widow Edith and their one son and two daughters. ==Selected publications==