Ann Westmore: Whilst these Fellows were coming back and forth, was there also a scientific component of this? Were there also scientists from other parts of the world who came to the Institute for training?

Sue McKay: I started in 1973 as an employee of the hospital working with Mr O'Brien. We actually started in the old mortuary before going into the new building. The Fellows had a very tiny office with two chairs which was their tea-room, their office and their lunchroom. They did everything in that room and they never complained because they were where they wanted to be. And they were learning a lot. Also at that time, they were developing, Wayne mentioned about the suture, actually I have an article talking about the suture. At the same time, there was the double clamp being made which [in some quarters came to be known as] the Henderson-O’Brien clamp which was used for micro-vascular surgery.[56]

Wayne Morrison: The Henderson involved in that was Peter Henderson, the ophthalmologist, not Keith Henderson, the neurosurgeon.

Sue McKay: And Bruce [Treagus][57] who was here, but had to go over to the Hospital, he actually started repairing Mr O'Brien’s instruments at the very start, the micro-instruments. And Mr O’Brien and the Ginch Brothers[58] developed a micro-needle holder. It was all in their heads and when one of them died they didn’t have the die[-cast] for it. And Bruce changed a few other instruments.

Talking about research, Mr O'Brien would always come in and look at what the Fellows were doing as they worked, and he would ask them what they were doing. Sometimes he’d say, 'No, I told you last week you were doing this and this. Why are you doing that?’ He was always on the ball. He always knew what every person was supposed to be doing, no matter what.

I keep in touch with some of the ex-Fellows. I actually went to the States for two years with a Fellow that I met through here who offered me a job over there. So I guess indirectly we trained a lot of people in the States in that way.

And when the science started there was a tiny little dark room where I used to develop x-rays. And the biochemists would have to do their biochemistry in a room out the back. But Mr O'Brien always aimed to develop one building where we would do more and there would be more people.

Ann Westmore: Did he set assignments, a small piece of research, for the Fellows to complete over a period of time?

Sue McKay: Yes, a small piece of research.

Ann Westmore: Can one of you paint me a picture of what that was like, as a scientist or a Fellow?

Wayne Morrison: Well we should ask the scientists. But perhaps I could just give an introduction because when I was there – I'm not a scientist by training at all and I’m sure the scientists are fully aware of our limitations. But, in a sense, the early microsurgery was a technique which was being developed, rather than a science. So it demanded experience in being able to technically join up small blood vessels to keep tissues alive.

The early research, in inverted commas, was transferring bits of tissue from one place to another place, based on the joining up of blood vessels. If these blood vessels clotted off or were blocked off [the tissue could not be transferred, and], as Jim has said, his role was to prevent the spasm or to prevent clotting. They were the kind of research interests that microsurgeons had. The other area was known as reperfusion injury. After a piece of tissue is separated from the body and the blood flow stops, obviously it's going to die. If you reconnect it, perhaps strangely you actually add further injury to that tissue. Because adding oxygen - which brings with it blood vessels and blood cells and the like, which are really designed to attack damaged tissue to protect the rest of the organism from that damage - will further damage the injured part, perhaps critically. So it was this protection from the reperfusion injury with which we were concerned.

A lot of our research was anatomically based. Every Wednesday morning for years, we'd go to the City Morgue, taking the research Fellows down there with us, and we’d dissect out flaps.[59] And we’d do similar things on animals and transplant bits of tissue. But it was relatively soft science. And I think that’s why surgery at that period was having difficulty competing with the medical institutes because we weren’t seen as really competitive scientists. It wasn’t until Ken Knight was appointed as our first scientist, and Michael Hickey[60] our pride and joy – our first PhD student, that we became credible as a true scientific field. Again, Bernard O’Brien was aware of that as was Dick Bennett and this gave us much more credibility.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine