Ann Westmore: Perhaps we can see it in terms of this difficult sort of marriage that was being attempted in the creation of the Department, a marriage between the Hospital and the University. People had been based wholly in the Hospital or wholly in the University and suddenly there was an attempt to create linkages between them.

Perhaps there were characteristics of Vernon Collins or Howard Williams that were better suited to creating those linkages. I think Arthur [Clark] has said that Vernon Collins was very much "of the Hospital". I don't know about Howard Williams. Was he more amenable to linkage with the University and would that have made a difference to the way the University Department of Paediatrics developed?

David McCredie: Perhaps a comment, having had my feet in both camps. I was a Research Fellow with Howard and, in 1960-61, I went on a Fellowship to America and I came back [in 1962] to find Vernon Collins established as the leader. They were both extremely good candidates and either one would have been suitable.

From my point of view, I worked between the two of them. Vernon Collins was very important getting the new specialty of paediatrics started. And at that stage we had research on respiratory disease under Howard, on cardiology under Mick Powell[33] and gastroenterology was just starting, Charlotte Anderson[34] having come back in the late 1950s, and nephrology was in the distant future a little bit. So Vernon and Howard were always very supportive of me.

That was probably the time when a more academic kind of research developed. Shortly after that, John Court arrived and started studying lipid metabolism with Marjorie Dunlop.[35] But also the name of the department was changed from the Department of Child Health to the Department of Paediatrics in about 1966, appropriately I'd say.[36]

Glenn Bowes: There is a theme here that we've sort of skirted around, and I think it’s important to keep the discourse going about this theme. Because today with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute there’s just as much need for the University Department of Paediatrics to perform a balancing act between a lab-based, high tech, hard science role and a clinical and public health role. It seems to me that there was a period right at the beginning of the Department where the roots of the same sort of tension were evident. So I don’t think it’s a matter of speaking ill of those who have been tremendous leaders in the past, but rather examining the roots of that tension. It’s good to keep that conversation going.

Kester Brown[37] : I came a little later on the scene. I well remember my former chief, Margaret McClelland,[38] telling me that probably Vernon Collins' greatest contribution was to get salaried doctors. That made it possible for doctors to specialise in paediatrics and paediatric surgery. It’s for that reason that the Children’s Hospital in Melbourne grew and expanded the wonderful staff it had, superseding Sydney. That was an absolutely key aspect of the development.[39]

I suspect that comparing these two people, Howard was much stronger in the research area and a great clinician. Vernon Collins probably had the disposition to get the political face of paediatrics up.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine