A chapter in the evolution of paediatrics in Australia
Introduction
Participants
Origins of the Department
Early developments
Leadership
New directions in patient care, research and teaching
Ethical issues in research and treatment
Formalising the research effort
Training Programs
Surgical research and training
Finding funds for research
Establishing sub-specialty departments
More on medical education
Academic outreach
Index
Search
Help
Contact us
| 1. | Professor Glenn Bowes MB BS PhD FRACP GradCert Mgmt (b.1948), a 1972 Monash medical graduate, trained as an adult respiratory physician before undertaking research towards a PhD in Canada on newborn respiratory physiology. On returning to Melbourne, he resumed practice as a respiratory physician at the Alfred Hospital, opening the first adolescent cystic fibrosis unit in Australia. He was appointed Professorial Associate and Director of the Royal Children's Hospital Centre for Adolescent Health in 1991 and later joined the Hospital's Board of Management. From 1998 to 2002 he was a senior medical administrator of the Women's and Children's Health Care Network and in 2002 was appointed Stevenson Professor of Paediatrics, head of the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics and Director of Postgraduate Education and Training at the Royal Children's Hospital.
[Return to page 4]
|
| 2. | Dame Elisabeth Murdoch AC DBE (b.1909) is a compassionate and much admired worker, supporter and benefactor of the Royal Children's Hospital. Her association with the Hospital started in her teenage years when she visited it and knitted singlets for babies. In 1933, as a young mother, she agreed to join the Hospital's Management Committee. Six years later when one of her four children was critically ill and needed surgery, she had to leave the sick youngster in the care of medical staff, as was common practice at the time. Years later, as President of the Hospital (a position she held from 1954 to 1965), she argued that parents should be allowed to visit their children in hospital at any time.
Dame Elisabeth urged her husband, Sir Keith Murdoch, to support the Good Friday Appeal for the Hospital through the Sporting Globe newspaper and 3DB radio station which he owned. The Appeal, founded in 1933, became an annual event, raising millions of dollars for the Hospital over many years. She also supported the development of a Hospital Research Committee which oversaw the Clinical Research Unit (established 1946, became operational 1948). The Committee evolved into a Research Foundation in 1960 with an autonomous Board, which she chaired for many years. In 1984 the Foundation evolved further into the Murdoch Institute for Research into Birth Defects (subsequently known as the Murdoch Children's Research Institute), the name commemorating Dame Elisabeth's leading role in promoting research in the Hospital. (For further information, see John Monks, Elisabeth Murdoch: Two Lives, 1994) [Return to page 4]
|
| 3. | Dr David A. McCredie MD BSc FRACP (b.1926) studied science and medicine at the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1949. He joined the Children's Hospital as a Resident Medical Officer in 1951 and after further training in Melbourne and overseas, he became Second Assistant and Associate Professor at the Hospital, 1963-91, serving as Hospital Nephrologist from 1973-79, and head of the General Medical and Professorial Medical Units from 1979-91. He has been involved in the Victorian Association of Youth Communities since the 1960s, and has also represented the Australian Kidney Foundation and the International Paediatric Nephrology Association. In 2004, he chaired the International Congress on Paediatric Nephrology in Adelaide.
[Return to page 4]
|
| 4. | The Royal Children's Hospital (established as the Melbourne Hospital for Sick Children in 1870 and generally referred to as the Children's Hospital until 1953 when the Royal Charter was conferred) is part of the Women's and Children's Health Care Network in Victoria. It is recognised as a world-class centre of excellence in paediatrics and adolescent medicine, specialising in the diagnosis, care and treatment of children and adolescents and in research on diseases, disorders and illnesses that occur in younger age groups.
It is the largest paediatric hospital in the Southern hemisphere and is a major teaching centre in paediatrics, having the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics situated on its campus. It has a strong research reputation and was the site of Australia's first paediatric clinical research unit (established in 1946) which, by degrees, has become the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. [Return to page 4]
|
| 5. | Professor Janet McCalman PhD FAHA (b.1948) is Director of the Johnstone-Need Unit for the History of Medicine at the University of Melbourne. She has been the driving force behind the development of the Witness to the History of Australian Medicine seminar program. Her contributions to the history of medicine include Sex and Suffering: Women's Health and a Women's Hospital, published by Melbourne University Press in 1998.
[Return to page 4]
|
| 6. | Dr Ann Westmore PhD (b.1953) is an Honorary Fellow in the University of Melbourne Centre for the Study of Health and Society. She is responsible for the conduct of the Witness to the History of Australian Medicine seminar program and the content of the online historical compendium of the University's Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences (see note 7).
[Return to page 4]
|
| 7. | Gateways to the History of Medicine at the University of Melbourne comprises a series of web-sites relevant to the study of the history of medicine, dentistry and the health sciences. The Historical Compendium to the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences provides information about the history of the Faculty, its Departments and Schools, and relevant concepts and people. The Gateways to the Johnstone-Need Medical History Unit provides a guide to research in the history of medicine around Australia. The Online Medical & Dental History Museum Catalogues details the dental and medical museum collections at the University of Melbourne. Finally, the Australian Nursing History Project is undergoing development to become a register of published and unpublished resources for the history of nursing.
[Return to page 4]
|
| 8. | The transcript of this seminar was published online on [date] at [Witness URL].
[Return to page 4]
|
| 9. | Professor David Miles Danks AO, MD FRACP (1931-2003) graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1954. During two years of residency at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, he spent a fateful six months as Resident Medical Officer to Professor Richard Lovell, the newly-appointed University of Melbourne Professor of Medicine who had just arrived from the UK. Lovell's interest in research had a big influence on Dr Danks who became aware of a range of methods to investigate the causes of illness.
In 1957 he joined the staff of the RCH as a Junior Resident Medical Officer and the following year he was appointed a Registrar in the Hospital's Clinical Research Unit. A period of overseas study followed in 1959 when an Uncle Bob Scholarship and a grant from the Felton Bequest enabled him to undertake training with leading human geneticists in London and Baltimore. After immersing himself in the rapidly developing science of medical genetics and its potential impact on human health, he returned to the RCH in 1962 and was appointed Deputy Director of the Clinical Research Unit. In 1967, he established a Genetics Research Unit and pursued his major research interests - the cause and treatment of inborn errors of metabolism, particularly copper metabolism. He developed community screening of genetic conditions via a network of clinics (now known as Genetic Health Services Victoria), as well as developing a series of electronic visual aid systems (POSSUM and OSSUM) to help clinicians diagnose genetic syndromes more reliably. He was a Reader in Genetics at the University of Melbourne for many years, lecturing to students of science, medicine and dentistry. He was also the University's Stevenson Professor of Paediatrics, 1975-83 and Professor of Paediatric Research, 1983-95. In addition, from mid-1975 he was Co-ordinator of Research at the Hospital. In 1984 he and his colleagues established the Murdoch Institute for Research into Birth Defects (incorporated in 1986) which became the premier centre for clinical genetics training in Australia and the Asia Pacific region. He retired as Emeritus Professor in 1995 and was honoured with many awards, including the Order of Australia. He lived to see the merging of the Murdoch Institute with the RCH Research Foundation in 2000, and the establishment of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute which combined genetic and clinical services, plus research. The Institute's objective was that "every child should be born healthy and with normal abilities". (Personal communication, June McMullin (Danks) to Ann Westmore; Obituaries in The Age (14 August 2003), The Herald Sun (19 August 2003) and The American Journal of Human Genetics, vol 73, pp 981-985) [Return to page 4]
|
| 10. | Dr June McMullin (Danks) MBBS (b.1931) graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1954 and spent three years as a Registrar and Anaesthetics Registrar at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. After marrying David Danks and starting a family she gained wide-ranging experience in women's health, working in the areas of family planning, antenatal and postnatal care and menopausal medicine. (Personal communication June McMullin (Danks) to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 4]
|
| 11. | Dr Howard Ernest Williams MD MRACP (1910-1999), worked at the Children's Hospital for much of the period, 1939-75. He trained in medicine at the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1935, and was Medical Superintendent at the Children's Hospital from 1939-42, and Physician to Inpatients, 1948-75. He was a keen researcher and one of his earliest studies concerned pre-operative fluid replacement to reduce the life-threatening biochemical disturbances associated with pyloric stenosis. The death rate from the condition at the Children's subsequently fell from 16% to 2%.
He spent four years on active service during World War II and in 1946 he was made the Hospital's first full-time Director of Clinical Research. He started as head of the Clinical Research Unit in 1948 after a period of overseas study on a Nuffield Travelling Fellowship. During this trip he worked with Professor James Spence in England and visited paediatric research laboratories in the US, including Harvard. The research of the Unit focused on pulmonary and respiratory disorders, metabolic disturbances of the gut, and the body's homeostatic mechanisms. He was appointed Executive Chairman of the Royal Children's Hospital Research Foundation when it was established in 1960. On his retirement in 1975 he became Professorial Associate to the Department of Paediatrics and took responsibility for postgraduate medical education until 1979. According to Dr John Court (see footnote 13), many - if not most - of the professors in paediatrics in universities throughout Australia were taught by, or worked with Howard Williams. "He was never a professor, but he was a creator of professors". (Personal communication, John Court to Ann Westmore) (For further information see V. L. Collins "The Development of Paediatric Services in Victoria: Part 2", Medical Journal of Australia, II, 1970, p 113, Charlotte Anderson, "An Appreciation", Australian Paediatric Journal, 12, 1976, pp 69-71 and David Danks, "A Tribute: Howard Williams Leader of Modern Paediatrics", Fellowship Affairs, July 1999, p 29) [Return to page 4]
|
| 12. | Professor Peter Duhig Phelan BSc MD FRACP (b.1936) graduated in science (1959) and medicine (1961) from the University of Queensland. He spent a year as a Junior Resident at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, a year as a Senior Resident at the Brisbane Children's Hospital and a further year as a Registrar at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1964. He joined the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, (RCH) in 1965 as a Medical Registrar and subsequently did an MD supervised by Dr Howard Williams. After a period as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Harvard University School of Public Health he returned to the RCH in 1970. He was Director of Thoracic Medicine at the Hospital 1974-83, and served as Stevenson Professor of Paediatrics and Head of the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics 1983-97, when he took early retirement. He trained many paediatric thoracic physicians from Australia, Asia, Europe and North and South America, and maintained a research program in thoracic medicine. His experience in medical education and administration was put to good use after 2000 when he became Planning Dean for the proposed new school of medicine at Bond University on the Gold Coast.
He is credited with developing numerous specialist paediatric professorial positions within the University of Melbourne including Chairs in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Paediatric Orthopaedic Surgery, Adolescent Health, Paediatric Surgery, Paediatric Haematology and Oncology, Community Child Health, Child and Adolescent Psychology, and Paediatric Critical Care. He was also influential in recruiting Professor Bob Williamson to lead the Murdoch Institute and become Research Professor in Genetics after David Danks' retirement. He also served in leadership roles within the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Australian College of Paediatrics, the Thoracic Society of Australia, the Paediatric Research Society of Australia and the Australian Medical Council. (Personal communication, Peter Phelan to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 4]
|
| 13. | Dr John Maurice Court AM, MB BS FRACP (b.1929) has had a working association with the Children's Hospital lasting around fifty years. A 1953 University of Melbourne medical graduate, he spent successive intern years at the Melbourne and Royal Children's Hospitals. In 1956-57 he worked as a Research Registrar in the RCH Clinical Research Unit under Drs Howard Williams and Charlotte Anderson, and was then appointed Clinical Supervisor of student teaching. In the late 1950s he was Assistant (then Acting) Medical Director and it was during this time that he developed the Court needle which enabled intravenous treatment without cutting into veins. He also persuaded the Hospital's Committee of Management to allow children with ongoing medical conditions to remain patients of the Hospital until age 18 (instead of 14 which was the previous age limit) and to introduce a unit patient record system, thereby revolutionizing the management of patient histories. He was also closely involved in planning the new Children's Hospital in Parkville.
After further training in Birmingham in the early 1960s he was appointed University of Melbourne First Assistant to Professor Vernon Collins 1965-72, Physician to Outpatients 1965-75, and Physician to Inpatients 1975-78. In 1972 he left the employ of the University to establish the Hospital's Department of Developmental Paediatrics which expanded further in 1981 to include the Department of Adolescent Medicine. During the 1970s and 1980s he was Director of Diabetes Services at the Hospital and filled many positions in the wider medical community including the Medical Board of Victoria, the Australian Association for Adolescent Health, the Journal of Paediatrics and Community Health, and the Royal Australian College of Physicians. He continued working in the field of adolescent medicine during the 1990s and, as of 2004, he is still working in the field, including a day each week at the Children's Hospital. (Personal communication, John Court to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 4]
|
| 14. | The University of Melbourne Faculty of Medicine Minutes Vol 8, p 344 refers to a meeting between representatives of the University and of the Children's Hospital Committee of Management on 8 April, 1952. A Draft Agreement formulated at that time stated that:
On 18 September, 1952, the Faculty was informed that the Committee of Management of the Children's Hospital had approved the Draft Agreement (p. 426) and on 20 November 1952, the Vice-Chancellor gave approval for a formal agreement (p 467). [Return to page 4]
|
| 15. | Sir James Spence was appointed Professor of Paediatrics at Newcastle-upon-Tyne University, England, in 1928 and pioneered "social paediatrics" which emphasised family structure and function in child health. Spence stressed the scientific study of child health alongside an emphasis on the work of doctors in communicating with patients and families. He had a profound influence on Australian paediatrics and inspired Dr Howard Williams approach in the Clinical Research Unit at the Children's Hospital which became active in 1948. Spence wrote The Purpose and Practice of Medicine (1960) among many contributions on subjects with a bearing on child health.
[Return to page 5]
|
| 16. | Peter Yule, The Royal Children's Hospital: A history of faith, science and love, Halstead Press, 1999.
[Return to page 5]
|
| 17. | The Minute Books of the University of Melbourne Faculty of Medicine, hand-written with type-written inclusions, page-numbered and indexed, are retained by the University of Melbourne Archives.
[Return to page 5]
|
| 18. | Early Clinical Supervisors included Drs Harry Hiller, Bernard Neal, Tom Maddison and David Fearon.
[Return to page 6]
|
| 19. | Dr Howard Boyd Graham DSO MC, MD (1891-1966), widely known as Boyd Graham, graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1915 and, after serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War I, joined the Children's Hospital as a Resident Medical Officer. He was soon appointed Assistant Pathologist and, in 1923, became the first Medical Superintendent. He continued in that role until 1924 when he established a private paediatric practice, specialising in infant feeding, diabetes and rheumatic fever. He was an Honorary Physician to Outpatients at the Hospital (1925-52) and to Inpatients (1946-51), meanwhile continuing a long-standing interest in research.
He was a member of the University of Melbourne Faculty of Medicine and Dean of the Children's Hospital Clinical School in 1950 when he sought Faculty approval to extend students' term of attendance at the Hospital from two to three months. Faculty agreed to introduce the change in 1952. He reported to Faculty that year that the Australian Association of Paediatricians had decided to urge all medical schools to establish Chairs of Child Health. (Faculty Minutes, volume 8, p 174) In addition to his medical responsibilities, he was President of the Victorian Council of Social Services for several years. This appointment reflected his conviction that poverty and malnutrition were important influences on childhood illness. His memoirs on the Children's Hospital were published in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1953. (For further information see Robert Southby and Reginald Webster, "Obituary: Howard Boyd Graham", Medical Journal of Australia, I, 1966, pp 464-465) [Return to page 6]
|
| 20. | Dr Robert (‘Bob') Southby OBE OStJ, MD FRACP FACST FAMA (1897-1991) joined the Children's Hospital in 1922 as a Junior Resident Medical Officer, a year after graduating in medicine from the University of Melbourne. He was appointed Assistant Pathologist of the Children's Hospital in 1923 and Medical Superintendent 1924-25. He was then appointed honorary medical officer to the Hospital's Venereal Diseases Clinic where children were treated for infection with syphilis and gonorrhoea, largely contracted during childbirth.
He was one of the last of the "general paediatricians", working in a general practice in Essendon while also serving as a Physician to Outpatients at the Children's Hospital (1935-45) and as a Physician to Inpatients (1946-57). The University appointed him Lecturer in Diseases of Children in 1950, which entailed giving 15 lectures a year to medical students. In 1958 he was appointed Honorary Consulting Physician to the Royal Children's Hospital and, in 1961, Consultant Paediatrician to the Victorian Health Department (Maternal and Child Welfare Branch). He was active in medical and community affairs, serving in senior positions with the Medical Board of Victoria, the Australian Medical Association Victorian Branch, the Hospitals and Charities Commission, St John Ambulance Brigade and the Aboriginal Affairs Advisory Council of Victoria. (See Who's Who in Australia 1968, and Chiron, 1991, p 71) [Return to page 6]
|
| 21. | Dame Hilda Stevenson DBE CBE OBE (1893-1987), daughter of H V McKay, the inventor of the combine harvester, was appointed to the Committee of Management at the Children's Hospital in 1938. During the 1930s and 1940s, she played a leading role in the Town and Gown Guild, a University of Melbourne women's organisation which raised ten thousand pounds for a new University Union Building, a sort of clubhouse for academic staff and students. The University awarded her the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa in 1973. She served as the Hospital's Vice-President, 1951-73. According to historian Peter Yule, "In late 1958 … Mrs (later Dame) Hilda Stevenson, a vice-president of the committee of management … donated 80,000 pounds to endow a chair of child health." (See The Royal Children's Hospital: A History of Faith, Science and Love, p. 336). The relevant University of Melbourne Statute differs over the size of her donation, and reports that she gave the sum of 100,000 pounds. Regardless of the amount, the name of the Chair commemorates her.
The Stevenson Chair in Child Health was renamed the Stevenson Chair in Paediatrics in 1965. [Return to page 6]
|
| 22. | Professor (later Sir) Lorimer Fenton Dods Kt MVO, MD ChM FRACP FACGP(Hon) DCH (1900-1981) was inaugural Professor of Child Health at the University of Sydney, 1949-60. He played an important role in the development of paediatrics as a medical specialty in Australia. According to Dr Howard Williams, "Many of the younger paediatricians will not know or fully understand how difficult it was in the immediate post-war period for paediatrics to become established as a discipline in its own right and yet be linked to adult medicine as a respected partner. At this time many adult physicians did not have any concept that paediatrics was a study of the factors responsible for the health and illnesses in a young developing child. To many, paediatrics was a study of illness in ‘a little man'. Because Lorimer had the respect of his adult colleagues he was able to give them and the College of Physicians a better understanding of the importance and complexities of the study of children and so helped bridge a gap which could have easily developed between adult and children's medicine." (See Australian Paediatric Journal, 1981, p 72. See also Who's Who in Australia 1950)
[Return to page 6]
|
| 23. | Professor Vernon Leslie Collins CBE, MD FRACP FRCP DCH FRS (1909-1978) was born and educated in western Victoria and, on matriculating, spent a year as a primary school teacher. He then embarked on medical training at the University of Melbourne where he graduated in 1933 and gained his MD in 1936. He spent 1934-35 at the Melbourne Hospital, before joining the Children's Hospital in 1936 as a registrar and serving as Medical Superintendent (a position roughly equivalent today to that of Chief Resident), 1937-39. He was in England from 1940-46, at first studying for higher degrees and then working as gastroenterologist at the North Middlesex Hospital where he gained first-hand experience of a different model of employing doctors in hospitals than the "honorary system" practised in most Australian hospitals.
On returning to Melbourne in 1946 he spent several years in private practice combined with an appointment as Honorary Outpatient Physician at the Children's Hospital. In 1948 he became Honorary Physician to Inpatients. He was Medical Director of the Hospital 1949-59 with administrative control and full inpatient physician status and teaching responsibilities. He was the first full-time salaried Medical Director appointed to a teaching hospital in Melbourne and he introduced some significant policies including salaried medical staff. He studied the latest developments in hospital planning and architecture in the USA and Canada in 1950 and 1951, in preparation for a proposed new Children's Hospital in Melbourne. The task of planning the hospital required close collaborations with medical and nursing staffs, the Hospital's Committee of Management, hospital administrators, engineers, architects, bureaucrats and many voluntary organizations involved in fund-raising. He was appointed the inaugural Stevenson Professor in Child Health in 1959 and continued in that role (his title changed in 1965 to Stevenson Professor of Paediatrics) until his retirement in 1974, despite chronic ill health in his final years. He was active in medical affairs, serving on the Council of the British Medical Association (Victorian branch) from 1952-59, and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), 1960-65. He also chaired the NHMRC Child Health Committee, 1966-69. He was well respected by his peers, serving as President of the Paediatric Society of Victoria in 1955 and President of the Australian Paediatric Association, 1969-70. (For further information, see Vernon Leslie Collins Festschrift Issue, Australian Paediatric Journal, 10, 1974, pp 254-261, and H Williams and A. L. Williams, "Obituary", Australian Paediatric Journal, 14, 1978, pp 128-130) [Return to page 6]
|
| 24. | Dr Winston Selby Rickards BSc MD DPM FRACP FRANZCP FRCPsych CIPsych AFBPsS MAPsS (b.1920) graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1943 and then undertook his residency at St Vincent's Hospital. Army service followed, then postgraduate studies in the University of Melbourne Psychology Department (graduating BSc in 1949), at St Vincent's Hospital where he was assistant psychiatrist and demonstrator in clinical medicine (gaining an MD in 1950 and MRACP in 1951), and at St Vincent's and Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital where he undertook a Diploma in Psychological Medicine (graduating in 1951). In the meantime (1948), one of the leaders of psychiatry in Melbourne, Dr John F Williams, introduced him to the multi-disciplinary Child Guidance Clinic at the Royal Children's Hospital, a setting which became his life's work for over 30 years. In the early 1950s he went overseas on a Rockefeller Fellowship, training at the Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, and the Tavistock Clinic in London, as well as gaining some experience in residential care of mildly subnormal and geriatric individuals. He became a member of the British Psychological Society and later a foundation Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
On his return to Australia in 1955, he was appointed Director of Psychiatry (later, Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences) at the Royal Children's Hospital. His interest in the broad field of child development led to his involvement in the evolving disciplines of psychology, audiology, speech pathology and child psychotherapy. For some years he lectured in Social Studies at the University of Melbourne (1955-74), and was a member of the University's Board of Studies. He also taught child psychiatry in the University Department of Paediatrics at the Hospital for more than two decades from 1965, encouraging paediatric registrars to get some training in Developmental Psychiatry as part of their training. He contributed actively to the setting up of the University's Department and Chair of Psychiatry (established 1964), and for the following three decades he provided formal teaching and clinical sessions to medical students and trainee psychiatrists, mainly in the setting of the Children's Hospital but also in the adult Department of Psychiatry (situated at the Royal Melbourne Hospital), as well as being an Examiner in psychiatry. In 1970 he was locum Director of Training at Washington University, USA, and visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago. In 1984 he became an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at the Royal Children's Hospital and began work in private psychiatric practice at the Melbourne Clinic. (Personal communication, Winston Rickards to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 7]
|
| 25. | Professor Arthur Colvin Lindesay Clark AM, MD FRACP (b.1928) graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1951. After two years at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH), he was appointed junior Resident Medical Officer and then Pathology Registrar at the RCH, 1954-55. In 1956 he returned to the RMH as Clinical Supervisor. He continued his paediatric training and haematology research in England and the US. He returned to the Royal Children's Hospital in 1961 where he worked under Dr John Colebatch (see later). He was Second Assistant in the Department of Child Health 1961-63, First Assistant 1963-65 and Physician to Outpatients 1964-65. He was appointed the Foundation Professor of Paediatrics at Monash University in 1965 and continued in that position until his retirement in 1993. Among many professional positions, he was President of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1989. (Personal communication, Arthur Clark to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 7]
|
| 26. | Dr Alexander Wynne Venables MD FRACP (b.1922) was a 1946 University of Melbourne medical graduate. After serving as Resident Medical Officer (RMO) and Registrar at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (1946-48), he was appointed RMO at the Children's Hospital where he was RMO, Registrar, and Senior Medical Registrar until 1953. At that time he became Acting Outpatient Paediatrician at the Alfred Hospital and Physician to the Rheumatic Clinic at the Children's Hospital. Later that year, he embarked on further postgraduate training in the UK, in the Department of Child Health at Newcastle-upon-Tyne (headed by Professor James Spence), and at the National Heart Hospital in London where he was an Honorary Assistant Clinical Registrar. He returned to the Children's Hospital in late 1955 as full-time Paediatrician, Assistant to the Medical Director, Dr Collins, and Assistant to the Cardiac Investigatory Clinic. He was Physician to Outpatients, 1958-67 and from 1959-61 he was Sub-Dean of the Clinical School. In 1959, he was appointed Physician in Charge of the Cardiac Investigatory Clinic and from 1968 until his retirement in 1988 he was full-time Director of the Department of Cardiology, lecturing to students on paediatric cardiology during this time. (Personal communication Alex Venables to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 7]
|
| 27. | In fact, according to Dr Venables, he was never First Assistant. He was in the anomalous position of being on the Professorial Unit staff, but not a member of the Professorial Unit. (Personal communication, Alex Venables to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 7]
|
| 28. | The research group included Dr Charlotte Anderson (see later), Dr Bill McDonald who later became a Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Western Australia, and Dr Ron O'Reilly who was doing an MD in respiratory medicine. The resident staff good-naturedly nicknamed the research unit the "thought clinic" according to Dr Venables. (Personal communication, Alex Venables to Ann Westmore)
Even though there was not much formal research beyond the clinical research units (Drs Howard Williams, Charlotte Anderson and Douglas Stephens - see later), there was an atmosphere of encouragement to enquire and investigate clinical problems. This was fostered by Dr Collins, and shared by others who influenced the development of a formal approach to paediatric practice. For instance when an outbreak of neonatal infection occurred in the infants ward, Dr Court was encouraged to investigate the cause: "Swabbing everything and everybody: it eventually incriminated the practice of how hand washing was done in the hospital, the culprits being the hand scrubbing brushes, and it was actually safer not to wash at all rather than to have wet hands." In those days, the Hospital dominated the research presentations at the annual meetings of the Australian Paediatric Association. (Personal communication, John Court to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 7]
|
| 29. | Dr Bernard William Neal AM, MD FRACP DipEd(Tert) Blit (Hons) (b.1924), widely known as ‘Bunny' Neal, was unusual in combining paediatrics with training in education and literature. A 1947 University of Melbourne medical graduate, he joined the Children's Hospital in 1948 as a Junior Resident. For five years from 1950 he was a Registrar under Dr Stanley Williams, a Medical Officer in the General Clinic and Clinical Supervisor. His first formal taste of teaching paediatrics occurred when he spent 1955-56 as Lecturer in Child Health at Liverpool University.
On returning to Melbourne in 1957 he was appointed Honorary Paediatrician at Box Hill Hospital and Clinical Assistant to Outpatients at the Children's Hospital. Later he was Physician to Outpatients at the Children's (1962-73) and Physician to Inpatients (1973-87). He was also Dean of Postgraduate Medical Education (1979-89) and, in 1986, he furthered his broad professional training by studying decision analysis as a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. He served on many professional bodies and was President of both the Medical Board of Victoria and of the Australian Medical Council. His interest in education equipped him well to serve as Vice-President of the Australian Medical Postgraduate Foundation. He also served on the Ethics Committees of the Royal Australian College of Physicians, the National Health and Medical Research Council, and on the Committee of the International Paediatric Association. (Personal communication Bernard Neal to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 7]
|
| 30. | Suspicion was also directed in the other direction. In the early days of the University of Melbourne Department of Child Health, when Dr John Court was a member of the Faculty of Medicine, he detected "a certain amount of antagonism towards the department from older established members of the Faculty. This was something that Vernon Collins had to steer us through. There was also a lot of resistance from non-medical Faculties of the University towards the development of formal new departments as they felt that medical professors were potentially too numerous and thus too powerful in influencing the University as a whole. When I was Acting Professor in the department…I was very award of this attitude at Professors' meetings I attended. This certainly inhibited the development of University departments within clinical schools for a while." (Personal communication, John Court to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 7]
|
| 31. | A third area of tension existed between doctors in private practice working in an honorary capacity in the hospital, and full-time hospital medical appointees. (Personal communication, Alex Venables to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 7]
|
| 32. | Dr John Martin McNamara MBBS FRACP (b.1936) was a 1959 University of Melbourne medical graduate who joined the Children's Hospital staff as a Junior Resident in 1964. In 1968-69 he worked at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, London, as a Resident Assistant Physician, before returning to Melbourne where he was a part-time First Assistant at the Children's and Mercy Maternity Hospitals. He was appointed Consultant Paediatric Physician and Senior Physician in the Department of General Medicine in 1975 and continued in that role until 1984 when he became Chairman of the Hospital's Division of General Medicine, 1984-92. He taught undergraduates and postgraduates for many years and was Vice-President of the Australian College of Paediatrics, 1995-97. He chairs the Hospital's history committee and is a member of the Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria.(Personal communication, John McNamara to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 8]
|
| 33. | Dr Mostyn (‘Mick') Levi Powell MB BS MRCP FRACP (1904-1994) trained in medicine at the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1926. He joined the Children's Hospital in 1927 and was Medical Superintendent of the Hospital in 1929, Physician to Outpatients, 1935-47, and to Inpatients, 1946-64. After war service, he studied congenital heart disease at the Johns Hopkins Medical School and on returning to the Hospital, he was a paediatric heart specialist and Consultant to the Cardiac Investigatory Clinic. He retired from the Hospital in 1964 and continued in private practice for some years. (See Who's Who in Australia 1968)
[Return to page 8]
|
| 34. | Dr Charlotte (‘Charlo') Morrison Anderson MD MSc FRCP FRACP (1915-2002) studied science and worked as a research biochemist at the Baker Institute in Melbourne 1936-41. She then undertook medical training at the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1945. She spent a year at the Melbourne Hospital before joining the Children's Hospital in 1946, encouraged by Dr Bertie Coates at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. She accepted Dr Howard Williams' offer of a post as Registrar and Research Fellow in the new Children's Hospital Clinical Research Unit, 1948-50, as she was interested in clinical investigations of disorders of largely unknown origin. The work of the Unit soon led her to examine cystic fibrosis and coeliac disease and, by 1949, she had devised a test to differentiate one from the other.
She continued her work on malabsorption problems, 1951-53, this time at the Hospital for Sick Children, London, as well as at Birmingham University and Children's Hospital where she was involved in testing the claims of a Dutch group that coeliac disease was triggered by dietary wheat flour in susceptible individuals. The Birmingham group went on to show that wheat gluten was responsible for the disorder and a gluten free diet could control it. On returning to Melbourne she continued to work on the two diseases with Drs Rudge Townley, Ruth Langford (later Bishop) and Pat Phair at the Royal Children's Hospital. With them she formed the Gastroenterological Research Unit in 1961and served as its first Director, 1962-68. She was instrumental in establishing the Australian Society for Paediatric Research prior to her appointment as Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health at Birmingham University in 1968. After retirement she continued to conduct research and write in the field of gastroenterology at the Princess Margaret Children's Medical Research Foundation in Perth. (See Charlotte M Anderson, "Obituary: Professor William Bowie Macdonald", Australian Paediatric Journal, 20, 1984, pp 2-3. See also Who's Who in Australia 1968 and 1971) [Return to page 8]
|
| 35. | A/Professor Marjorie Elizabeth Dunlop BSc MSc PhD (b.1945) gained research experience in pharmacology, paediatrics and medicine while completing her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. She joined the Department of Medicine at the Royal Children's Hospital as a research worker in 1969, studying obesity and diabetes until 1982 when she moved to the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital and to the Royal Melbourne Hospital where she was the NHMRC Principal Research Fellow and an Honorary Professor in the Department of Medicine. She is now working as a Project Officer with the University of Melbourne Faculty of Medicine. (Personal communication, Marjorie Dunlop to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 8]
|
| 36. | The name change of the Department actually took place in 1965.
[Return to page 8]
|
| 37. | Dr Thomas Christopher Kenneth (‘Kester') Brown AM, MD FANZCA FRCA FCA(SA) (b.1935) trained in medicine at St Andrew's, Scotland. He did his internship in London, Ontario, and worked as a General Practitioner in the North-West Territories of Canada, before undertaking training as an anaesthetist in Vancouver and Toronto. After spending a year at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1966, he worked the following year at the Children's Hospital as Medical Officer (Intensive Care). He was subsequently appointed Specialist Anaesthetist Perfusionist and, from 1974-2000, was Director of Anaesthesia. He was also the Hospital's Divisional Director of Specialist Services, 1979-96. The Australian Society of Anaesthetists named a lecture in his honour in 1997 and he was President of the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists, 2000-04. (Personal communication, Kester Brown to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 8]
|
| 38. | Dr Margaret (‘Gretta') McClelland OBE, MB BS (1905-1990) graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1931. She joined the Queen Victoria Hospital as a resident medical officer, 1932-33 and was its Medical Superintendent, 1934-35. She moved to Sydney in 1936 and in 1937-38 she was Medical Director of Prince Henry Hospital (The Coast Hospital). Later she went to England where she became full-time anaesthetist at the Central Middlesex Hospital, London, gaining her specialist qualifications in 1942. She is credited with an important scientific contribution at this time, elucidating the toxic interaction of the anaesthetic agent, Trilene, with soda lime. This advance eliminated a potentially dangerous method of anaesthetic administration and increased the safety of Trilene.
On returning to Melbourne after the war with her own anaesthetic machine, she worked at the Royal Melbourne, St Vincent's and the Children's Hospitals. She was appointed Senior Paediatric Anaesthetist at the Children's in 1949, half-time Director of Anaesthesia in 1952 and the first full-time Director in 1956, a position she retained until her retirement in 1970. Her research included the use of hypothermia for cardiac surgery and work on equipment to make anaesthesia safer and less traumatic for children. She trained large numbers of anaesthetists and was President of the Australian Society of Anaesthetists, 1964-65. (See Medical directory of Australia 1980, and personal communication, Kester Brown to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 8]
|
| 39. | The issue of what constituted appropriate salary and entitlements for the medical staff remained contentious for many years, according to Dr Bob Fowler, a senior surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital who was Secretary of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists of Victoria.
[Return to page 8]
|
| 40. | Mr Don Kinsey (b.1931) worked as a broadcaster and senior executive for 3DB radio station from 1957-76. In 1976 he joined the Hospital as Director of Public Affairs and, until his retirement in 1996, he advised management and staff on public opinion. (Personal communication, Don Kinsey to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 9]
|
| 41. | Lady Eleanor Mary (‘Ella') Latham CBE, BA (1878-1964) The daughter of teachers and herself a teacher before marrying barrister, John Latham (later Chief Justice of the High Court, 1935-52),
was foundation President of the Hawthorn branch of the Children's Hospital auxiliary in 1923. In 1933 she was appointed President of the Committee of Management of the Children's Hospital, serving in that position until 1954. She is credited with modernising the philosophy of the Hospital through measures such as appointing a full-time Medical Director and other salaried senior medical staff, improving the quality of nursing and medical care by building closer ties to the University, and supporting the establishment of a Clinical Research Unit. (For further information see Howard Williams, From charity to teaching hospital: Ella Latham's presidency 1933-1954, the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Book Generation, Glenroy, 1989) [Return to page 9]
|
| 42. | Professor Henry Ekert AM, MD BS FRACP FRCPA (b.1936) trained in medicine at the University of Melbourne graduating in 1960. He worked at the Royal Melbourne Hospital for several years before joining the Children's Hospital as a Research Fellow in Haematology in 1965. He became a clinical haematologist in 1970 and succeeded Dr John Colebatch as Director of Haematology in 1975. He was Chairman of the Specialist Medical Staff, 1984-92 and Chairman of the Hospital's Division of Medicine, 1992-98. During his career, he was involved in many important developments including the establishment of a Haemophilia Clinic at the Hospital, early bone marrow transplants, and a collaborative study about the impact on families of a child's death from cancer. (Personal communication, Henry Ekert to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 10]
|
| 43. | Professor Richard Robert Haynes Lovell AO, MD BS MSc FRCP FRACP Hon. FACP MRCS (1918-2000) was the first Professor of Medicine at the University of Melbourne. He was based at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and remained in the post, 1955-1983.
[Return to page 10]
|
| 44. | Professor Austin Eric Doyle AO, MD BS FRCP FRACP (1923-1993) was the first University of Melbourne Professor of Clinical Medicine at the Austin Hospital, 1966-1985.
[Return to page 10]
|
| 45. | As a teacher, "Dr Vernon Collins was excellent, and he listened to students' views. At the end of each term with students, we (Dr Collins and Dr John Court) would sit down with representatives from each small clinical group over lunch and ask them for their advice and comments to improve the course. And it was Vernon Collins who instituted a course of lectures to first year students at the University on growth and development, starting in the first week of the medical course. Sadly he was too ill to give consideration on their content or give the lectures, which I did, but it was a major development and very popular with students, at that time giving them a link between clinical studies and pre-clinical teaching. This was a radical move at the time, but the forerunner of later developments." (Personal communication, John Court to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 10]
|
| 46. | The Burns Research Unit was established in 1955 under paediatric surgeon, Mr A Murray Clarke, who was inspired by the Melbourne visit of Birmingham burns pioneer, Dr Leonard Colebrook. At the time, 10 per cent of surgical beds at the Children's Hospital were occupied by children with burns, half of them aged between one and three. The Unit was the first of its type in Australia, and one of the first in the world.
An early focus was evidence-based prevention of burns. The Unit was central to the development of Australian standards for children's nightwear, which led to the establishment of a Child Accident Prevention Foundation. [Return to page 10]
|
| 47. | The Royal Children's Hospital Research Foundation (subsequently Institute) was an extension of the Clinical Research Unit. It was established in 1960 to raise funds for research on health problems affecting children. Dr Howard Williams was its inaugural head and leader of one of three substantial groups formed at the outset (the other group leaders were Drs Douglas Stephens and Charlotte Anderson). Over time, a number of other groups were established, such as the Leukaemia/Haematology Group headed by Dr John Colebatch and the Genetics Research Unit, headed by Dr David Danks.
Drs Williams, Stephens, Anderson and Colebatch formed a management committee early on, taking turns as Chairman. They channeled funds into research, including some from the Good Friday Appeal. By 1967, the Foundation had twenty doctors, a team of science graduates, and eleven technicians and was internationally recognised for studies on a wide range of disorders affecting children and adolescents. With the Foundation facing difficulties in raising funds, Dr Danks sought additional income for his Genetics Research Unit from charitable trusts, organisations and individuals. This led to the founding of the Birth Defects Research Institute in 1981, re-named the Murdoch Institute for Research into Birth Defects in 1986. In 2000 the Institute merged with the RCH Research Foundation to become the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, with a staff of 600. It combines genetic and clinical services, plus wide-ranging research activities and is partly funded by the Foundation, partly by funds raised during the Good Friday Appeal, and partly by funds from other sources. (Personal communication, June McMullin (Danks) to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 10]
|
| 48. | Dr Patricia Phair PhD (b.1932) completed BSc and MSc degrees in the University of Melbourne Chemistry Department between 1950-55, then embarked on a PhD in the Department of Chemical Pathology, St Mary's Hospital and London University, on the structure of glycoproteins. She then worked as a research scientist with Dr Charlotte Anderson on cystic fibrosis (CF) 1959-69, except for nine months in 1964 when she worked in the Physiology Department at Cambridge University where she studied tissue culture techniques to use in her CF work. From 1969-70 she was Assistant Professor of Genetics at Cornell Medical School in New York, working on the basic biochemical defect in CF and on prenatal diagnosis of CF and some other genetic diseases. After a period out of the workforce for family reasons, she returned to the Royal Children's Hospital in 1986, working with Drs Harley Powell and David McCredie in the renal unit until 1992, then with Dr Julian Keogh in the Burns Research Unit until 1996 when she retired. (Personal communication, Pat Phair to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 10]
|
| 49. | When asked to elaborate on this, Dr Phair said the Hospital "was still rather male-dominated. Charlo [Charlotte Anderson] was very bright and internationally recognised and when she took up the Chair of Paediatrics at Birmingham, she was immediately involved in a wide range of high-powered committee work through the UK Medical Research Council etc as well as expanding her research capabilities." (Personal communication, Pat Phair to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 10]
|
| 50. | Dr John Rogers MBBS DCH FRACP Grad Dip Mental Health Sci (b. 1941) had three month periods as a Registrar and a Resident to Dr Vernon Collins during the 1960s. In 1971 he trained in paediatrics at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, London, and at the Sheffield Children's Hospital. He undertook training in medical genetics at the Johns Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore, 1973-75. During the following 25 years he worked as Senior Lecturer in Paediatrics, Medical Geneticist, Senior Medical Geneticist and Director of Clinical Genetics for the Royal Children's Hospital Genetics Research Unit (now the Victorian Clinical Genetics Service). A long-standing interest in pastoral care of hospital staff was heightened by his personal experience of lymphoma in 1989 which in turn prompted him to undertake training in group psychoanalytic therapy. He was Chairman of the Ethics and Social Issues Committee of the Human Genetics Society of Australia in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 2002 he was awarded the University of Pennsylvania Medical School's Distinguished Service Award for this work on Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva, an inherited disorder of bone. (Personal communication, John Rogers to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 11]
|
| 51. | Mr Edward Durham Smith AO, MD MS FRACS FACS (b.1922) graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1948 and, after undertaking training as a surgeon in Melbourne, London and Boston, joined the Alfred and Royal Women's Hospitals as a Paediatric Surgeon. He was a member of the senior surgical staff of the hospital from 1965-86, and a senior surgical associate in the University of Melbourne clinical school for the same period. He was also a Consultant Paediatric Surgeon at the Royal Women's and Mercy Maternity Hospitals. He retired in 1986. He was active in the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, serving as chairman of its Board of Paediatric Surgery, 1980-86; Senior Vice-President, 1985-87; President, 1987-89; and Executive Director, Surgical Affairs, 1989-92. (See Who's Who in Australia 2002 and personal communication, Durham Smith to Ann Westmore).
[Return to page 11]
|
| 52. | Dr Bob Fowler was another key member of the surgical research unit
[Return to page 11]
|
| 53. | F. Douglas (‘Doug') Stephens AO, DSO, MB MS FRACS FAAP (Hon) (b.1913), graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1936. After serving in the Australian Army Medical Corps during World War II he studied surgery at the Hospital for Sick Children, London. On returning to Melbourne, he was appointed research surgeon to the Children's Hospital, 1950-55 and honorary consultant surgeon to the Royal Women's Hospital. He was one of the first three near full-time surgical appointments made in 1952 at the Children's Hospital and in 1955 he became a full-time member of staff.
He was Director of the Hospital's Surgical Research Unit 1957-75, then left Australia to take up posts in Chicago of Professor of Urology and Surgery, Northwestern University Medical School, and Director of Surgical Research at the Children's Memorial Hospital. On retiring in 1986, he returned to Melbourne. He was then appointed Honorary Senior Consultant Surgeon and Honorary Surgical Research Fellow, Royal Children's Hospital Research Foundation and subsequently Honorary Research Fellow of the RCH Department of Surgery. (Personal communication Douglas Stephens to Ann Westmore; Who's Who in Australia 1988 and 2004) [Return to page 11]
|
| 54. | "In 1953, he [Vernon Collins] was directly responsible for the introduction of salaried sessional staff within this hospital. In so doing, and this feature remained unique in Victorian teaching hospitals for twenty years, he created the necessary opening for a career in paediatrics for many young people."
From a tribute minuted at a meeting of the senior staff of the Royal Children's Hospital on 18 April, 1978, and reported in "Obituary Alan L Williams", Australian Paediatric Journal, 14, 1978, p 129. See also Vernon Collins' detailed discussion of the salaried staff negotiations in "The Development of Paediatric Services in Victoria: Part 2", Medical Journal of Australia, II, 1970, pp113-116 [Return to page 11]
|
| 55. | Dr Thomas G. Maddison, MBBS (1924-1989) was an Adelaide University medical graduate who came to the Children's Hospital as a Resident in 1949. He established a private practice in general paediatrics and developed expertise in neonatology. He was the first neonatal paediatrician at the new Box Hill Hospital in 1957. In 1960 he was appointed a Physician to Outpatients at the Children's Hospital, continuing in that role until 1973 when he was appointed a Physician to Inpatients. He was head of the Hospital's Department of General Paediatrics and was clinical supervisor overseeing undergraduate medical education and head of the hospital's Phenylketonuria (PKU) Clinic. (See Peter Yule, The Royal Children's Hospital: A history of faith, science and love)
[Return to page 11]
|
| 56. | Professor Ruth Frances Bishop (nee Langford) AO, DSc PhD (b.1933) studied science at the University of Melbourne graduating in 1954. She was a Research Assistant at the Royal Children's Hospital, 1954-57 and obtained her PhD in microbiology in 1960. She then worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool, UK, 1962-65.
She was appointed Research Fellow with the Royal Children's Hospital Research Foundation in 1968 and led the team that isolated and identified rotavirus, a major cause of severe childhood diahorreal illness, in the early 1970s. She also helped develop a possible vaccine against rotavirus, for which she was awarded a Clunies Ross National Science and Technology Award and the Pasteur Award of the Children's Vaccine Institute, World Health Organisation, Geneva, in 1998. Her hand-written notes on rotavirus research survive. She was a Professorial Associate in the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics, 1990-94, and she has been a Professorial Fellow since 1995. She is also Senior Principal Research Fellow (National Health and Medical Research Council), Royal Children's Hospital Research Institute and Director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Laboratory for Research on Human Rotaviruses. (Personal communication, Ruth Bishop to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 12]
|
| 57. | Professor Geoffrey J. Bishop AM, MBBS, MGO, FRCOG (b.1932).
[Return to page 12]
|
| 58. | A/Professor Roger Kingsley Hall OAM, MDSc FRACDS FICD (b.1934) did his undergraduate dental training at the University of Melbourne before undertaking postgraduate studies in oral surgery and paediatric dentistry at the Eastman Dental Hospital and the Royal College of Surgeons in London. In 1960 he was appointed the Hospital's first full-time Paediatric Dentist with a special interest in facial and jaw trauma and cleft lip and palate. When the Hospital's Department of Dentistry was created in 1967 he was appointed its head, serving in that position until 1998 and he continues as Senior Dental Surgeon on a sessional basis. He has worked closely with geneticists to identify genetic syndromes with a dental component, and in 2003 was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Victorian Clinical Genetics Service.
In 1973 he founded the Australian Society of Dentistry for Children, with the encouragement of Vernon Collins and other staff members, becoming Foundation President from 1973-76. He was President of the International Association of Dentistry for Children from 1985-87. In 1994 his textbook, Pediatric Orofacial Medicine and Pathology was published. In 2004 he was a Principal Fellow of the University of Melbourne, where he has held teaching appointments continuously since 1957. (Personal communication, Roger Hall to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 12]
|
| 59. | Roger K. Hall, "Gross tooth hypocalcification in vitamin D resistant rickets", Australian Dental Journal, 1959, 4, pp 329-330.
[Return to page 12]
|
| 60. | Dr Anthony J. Lawrence was Honorary Dental Officer at the Hospital, 1957-60.
[Return to page 12]
|
| 61. | Professor Graeme L Barnes AO, MD FRACP (b.1941) trained in medicine at Otago University, graduating in 1965. His first contact with the Children's Hospital was 1970-72 when he was a Registrar and a Research Fellow in Gastroenterology. During 1972 he spent three months on a Heinz Travelling Fellowship studying paediatric departments in Britain, then lectured in paediatrics at Otago University, 1973-75. On returning to Melbourne he became Director of the Hospital's Department of Gastroenterology, 1975-95, during which time he played a leading role in community and professional education about common gastrointestinal problems and in research on the treatment of childhood diarrhoeal diseases in developed and developing countries. From 1996-99 he was Scientific Director of the Royal Children's Hospital Research Institute and was involved in plans to merge it with the Murdoch Institute. Since 1999 he has been a half-time Senior Gastroenterologist working with Professor Ruth Bishop on rotavirus vaccine development and a Professorial Fellow, Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne, mentoring and teaching postgraduate students. (Personal communication, Graeme Barnes to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 13]
|
| 62. | According to Dr Bob Southby (see footnote 20), the introduction of a personal interview with the parents of each child who died in the Hospital, a complete explanation of all the circumstances and a request for a post-mortem examination resulted in an increase in the proportion of autopsies conducted, much to the surprise of many of Vernon Collins' colleagues. (See Robert Southby, "Professor Vernon Collins", Australian Paediatric Journal, 10, 5, p 255)
[Return to page 13]
|
| 63. | Public concern about the retention of human tissue and organs without what the community considers to be informed consent was sparked in 1999 by inquiries into incidents in the United Kingdom at Alder Hey Hospital, Liverpool and the Royal Bristol Infirmary. Dr Paul Monagle, Director of Laboratory Services at Royal Children's and Royal Women's Health, Melbourne, took part in the development of Guidelines on Requesting Consent for Non-Coronial Post-Mortem Examination.
[Return to page 13]
|
| 64. | Professor Frank Oberklaid AOM, MD BS FRACP DCH (b.1945) completed his medical training at the University of Melbourne in 1969 and after Resident years at the Royal Melbourne and Children's Hospital, he spent a year traveling overseas, during which he completed a DCH in London. He resumed work at the Children's Hospital in 1973 and spent half of 1976 doing research with David Danks. Later that year he went to Harvard Medical School on a Fellowship and returned in 1980 to become Inaugural Director of the Department of Ambulatory Paediatrics which emphasised prevention and early intervention. He became Professor/Director when the Emergency Department was split off from the Department of Ambulatory Paediatrics which became the University's Centre for Community Child Health in 1994. (Personal communication, Frank Oberklaid to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 13]
|
| 65. | Mr Maxwell (‘Max') Kent MBBS FRACS (b.1929) was a 1952 University of Melbourne medical graduate who was on the staff of the Children's Hospital for four decades. He undertook surgical training at the Alfred Hospital and was appointed Assistant Surgeon at the Children's Hospital in 1958. In 1960 he was awarded the Uncle Bob Scholarship to train at the Chicago Children's Memorial Hospital. There he studied paediatric surgery with an emphasis on neonatology and thoracic and cancer surgery. Some years after resuming work at the Children's Hospital, he was appointed Chairman of the Division of Surgery, 1979-84, and Chief of Surgery, 1981-86. One of his legacies was the establishment of a Combined Cancer Therapy Clinic at the Hospital, which survives to this day (see later). It provides a regular forum for the discussion of individual cases of childhood cancer by medical, nursing, paramedical and support staff. (Personal communication, Max Kent to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 14]
|
| 66. | Dr Maxwell James (‘Max') Robinson AM, MD FRACP (b.1925) was a 1949 University of Melbourne medical graduate who joined the resident medical staff at the Children's Hospital in 1951. He was Chief Resident in 1954, Physician to Outpatients, 1958-70, Senior Physician in 1966, and Physician to Inpatients 1970-73 before joining the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur as Emeritus Professor of Paediatrics, 1974-78. After returning to Melbourne, he spent a year at Monash University, where he worked with Professor of Paediatrics, Arthur Clark, on the undergraduate teaching program. He resumed work at the Royal Children's Hospital in 1979, where he became Chairman of the Division of General Medicine in the early 1980s. His contributions to undergraduate medical education included two textbooks which he edited or co-edited, Paediatric Problems in Tropical Countries (1978) and Practical Paediatrics (1982). He was appointed University of Melbourne Reader in Paediatrics and Associate Professor in the mid-1980s. He has continued his close relationship with the Hospital as President of the Alumni Association. (Personal communication, Max Robinson to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 14]
|
| 67. | Marion Ievers, Kate Campbell, Mona Blanch. "Unrestricted visiting in a children's ward. Eight year experience", The Lancet, 5 November 1955, pp 450-453. The visiting hours' policy of the Children's Hospital officially changed in 1952 after some liberalisation in the early 1950s with nursing support.
[Return to page 14]
|
| 68. | Dr John Houghton Colebatch AO, MD FRCP FRACP DCH (b.1909) was a 1933 University of Adelaide medical graduate whose first appointment at the Children's Hospital, Melbourne, occurred in 1935. From 1937-39, he undertook physician training at the London Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children under Dr Donald Paterson, a leading Harley Street paediatrician. And during a course in haematology conducted by Dr (later Dame) Janet Vaughan DBE, FRS FRCP (1899-1993) at the Hammersmith Hospital in 1938 he learned to perform marrow puncture of the sternum and conducted research on normal bone marrow in fifty children in hospital for problems unrelated to their bone marrow.
After returning to Australia as World War II was declared, he renewed his acquaintance with the Children's Hospital, working as an Outpatient Physician and in private practice. Following service in the armed forces, he was reappointed Physician to Outpatients at the Children's Hospital (1946-55) and also worked in private paediatric practice (from 1947). It was at this time that he read US reports of the new treatment, aminopterin, which had reportedly extended the lives of children with acute leukaemia for several months. In October, 1947, he started working with this and other drug therapies as they became approved for trials, sending any patients with leukaemia whom he saw in private practice or outpatients to the Children's Hospital where he had access to beds, courtesy largely of Dr Mostyn (‘Mick') Powell. During the next decade he sought to evaluate which chemicals in what dose and for what duration, most reduced the symptoms of leukaemia. In 1948 and again in 1953, he put forward a proposal to establish a Haematology Research Unit at the Hospital with the aim of clarifying the most effective timing of chemotherapy to disrupt cancer cell division. The Senior Medical Staff opposed this proposal on both occasions but Dr Vernon Collins, the Medical Director, was sufficiently supportive to overrule their decision in 1953. The Unit made significant progress, enabling Dr Colebatch to present some promising findings at the Annual World Congress of Paediatrics in Copenhagen in 1956. By 1959, there was definite evidence that chemotherapy increased survival time, sometimes for up to three years or more, and three of Dr Colebatch's patients with leukaemia entered states of remission. (According to Dr Colebatch, the final written records of these three patients appear to have been mislaid.) From 1960 onwards, the duration of remissions increased, giving rise to expectations that in some patients this state of affairs would continue. In retrospect, he achieved what was regarded as his first cure in 1960. From the 1960s also, more drugs became available for chemotherapy every year. Dr Colebatch was Physician to Inpatients at the Royal Children's Hospital, 1957-67, during which time he obtained grants from the Hospital and the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria (ACCV) to continue his studies. In 1962, he was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship to study chemotherapy for leukemia and other cancers in the USSR, the UK and the US. He was also awarded the ACCV's Robert Fowler Travelling Fellowship which enabled him to study the US National Cancer Institute's approach to organising studies in multiple research centres. He then gained Australian Cancer Society support for a trial of chemotherapy in childhood leukaemia involving 14 paediatric hospitals and departments nationwide. This was a milestone in Australian medical history, being the first formal randomised clinical trial of any kind conducted nationally. In 1967, he helped to conduct six linked studies of chemotherapy for leukaemia and a study of the impact of radiotherapy on preventing or limiting infiltration by leukaemia into the brain and spinal cord. He was also Executive Chairman of the RCH Research Foundation 1970-72. After retiring from medical practice, the ACCV appointed him in 1976 to the position of inaugural Executive Secretary of the Victorian Chemotherapy Co-operative Group, established to encourage collaborative research studies between cancer clinicians. He continued as the Executive Secretary of the re-named Victorian Cooperative Oncology Group until 1982 when he became a consultant to the ACCV. (Personal communication, John Colebatch to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 15]
|
| 69. | David McCredie was a member of one of the first teams in Australia to perform a kidney transplant.
[Return to page 15]
|
| 70. | After some years of public debate, legislation was passed in the Victorian Parliament dealing with the procurement of body tissues and the clinical diagnosis of death.
[Return to page 15]
|
| 71. | The central creed of medical practice since Hippocrates has been to first do patients no harm. But medical research, by its nature, often entails some risk to patients' health and well-being. Recognition of this situation in Australia resulted in the development of a system of regulation by committees to scrutinise proposed research. Membership of these committees includes people with broad research experience who do not have any allegiance to the institution where the proposed research is to be conducted.
[Return to page 16]
|
| 72. | Professor Richard Graham Hay (‘Dick') Cotton BAgSc PhD DSc (b.1940) graduated in agriculture from the University of Melbourne in 1963, after which he completed a PhD. He then undertook postdoctoral studies in Canberra, before joining the Royal Children's Hospital Research Foundation in 1968. Later, at the Scripps Clinic in the US and at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge he undertook fundamental and pioneering studies of the monoclonal antibody technique.
He helped establish the original Murdoch Institute at the Royal Children's Hospital in 1984 and initiated the successful international journal, Human Mutation, in 1991. He established and was foundation President of the group now referred to as the Human Gene Variation Society in 1994, and gained an appointment as a National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Principal Research Fellow in 1996. The same year, he established the Genomic Disorders Research Centre at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne. He has written two books and many scientific papers on the detection of mutations and he is Treasurer of the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) which co-ordinates the sequencing and analysis of human genetic information. (Personal communication, Dick Cotton to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 17]
|
| 73. | Dr Anne Rickards BA(Hons) MA PhD MAPS (b.1933) undertook training in clinical and research psychology at the University of Melbourne and the Royal Children's Hospital Department of Child Psychiatry. She worked at the Women's Hospital on longitudinal studies, 1968-98, and also worked in the Psychology Department of the Children's Hospital, 1964-67 and 1979-2000. She was later involved in a research project examining the effect of home based intervention on pre-school children with developmental delay conducted by the Hospital's Department of Child Development and Rehabilitation. (Personal communication, Anne Rickards to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 17]
|
| 74. | Dr William (‘Bill') Henry Kitchen AM, MD BS FRACP FRACOG (b.1926) was a 1949 University of Melbourne medical graduate who joined the Children's Hospital in 1953 as a Junior Resident and the following year was Research Registrar for a year under Drs Howard Williams and Charlo Anderson. Until 1965 he combined work as an Outpatient Physician at the Hospital with a private paediatric practice. In 1965 he was appointed to a full-time position as First Assistant (equivalent to Associate Professor) in both the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, continuing in this post until 1991.
His main research interest was in the long-term outcome of extremely low birthweight infants, initially involving only those born in the Royal Women's Hospital, but evolving into the Victorian Infant Collaborative Study (VICS), comprising all extremely low birthweight infants born in Victoria. He was convener of this project until 1991. He was also convener of the Steering Committee which resulted in the establishment of the Neonatal Emergency Transport Service (NETS) in 1977 and served on its Advisory Committee until 1991. From 1967 he was associated with the Consultative Council of Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity in Victoria, serving as its Medical Coordinator for the period 1992-97 when he fully retired. (Personal communication, Bill Kitchen to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 17]
|
| 75. | The articles were Kitchen WH, Ryan MM, Rickards A et al (1978) A longitudinal study of very low-birthweight infants I: Study design and mortality rates, Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 20, 605-618 and Kitchen WH, Rickards A, Ryan MM et al (1979) A longitudinal study of very low-birthweight infants II: Results of controlled trial of intensive care and incidence of handicaps, Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 21, 582-589
[Return to page 17]
|
| 76. | Dr Mary Ellen Avery MD discovered, with Jere Mead, in the 1950s that a lack of surface active agents in the lungs (surfactants) of newborn babies led to respiratory distress and caused many of them to die. A Johns Hopkins University Medical School graduate of 1952, she was physician-in-chief at the Boston Children's Hospital 1974-85, a Professor of Paediatrics and Chair of the Department of Paediatrics at the Harvard Medical School, and a council member of the US Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. In 1991 she was awarded the US National Medal of Science for her work on respiratory distress in newborn. Later, she became President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
[Return to page 17]
|
| 77. | Dr John Stocks, MBBS FFARACS (1930-1974) trained in medicine at the University of Sydney before moving to Melbourne in 1963 to train in paediatric anaesthesia at the Royal Children's Hospital. He became assistant, then deputy, to the Director of Anaesthesia, Dr Margaret McClelland, and in 1969 he also took on the position of Director of Intensive Care. The following year, he was made Director of Intensive Care and Anaesthesia, remaining in the post until his premature death from a chronic condition in 1974.
Among his most important contributions was his development of Intensive Care at the Hospital, using prolonged nasotracheal intubation and ventilation. His Notes on Paediatric Anaesthesia were read widely, there being a dearth of literature on the subject. Paediatric surgeons often acknowledged that they could not have made their advances without the support that anaesthetists such as Dr Stocks provided. Twenty-five years after his death he was commemorated as having made the greatest contribution to paediatric intensive care in Australasia. (Personal communication, Kester Brown to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 17]
|
| 78. | Dr Alan Llewelyn Williams MD MCPA MAPA (c.1920 -1978), graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1942. After wartime service, he joined the Children's Hospital as a Resident Medical Officer in 1947. He was Assistant Pathologist 1948-59 and Director of Pathology for many years from 1959. Dr Cliff Hosking considered Dr Williams was his most influential mentor and supporter, and had a significant influence on the RCH. "He showed visionary leadership in pathology for many years and the breadth of his feeling for the institution was incredible … he was influential in the institution of the play therapy program at RCH which would have to be unusual for the Director of Pathology". (Personal communication, Cliff Hosking to Ann Westmore. See also "Obituary Alan L Williams", Australian Paediatric Journal, 14, 1978, p 129. See also Who's Who in Australia 1971)
[Return to page 17]
|
| 79. | Dr Garry Leigh Warne MBBS FRACP (b.1944) graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1968 before working at the Royal Melbourne Hospital for five years, during which he was Assistant Endocrinologist. In 1974, he joined the Royal Children's Hospital as a Junior Resident and in 1975-77 did laboratory research on foetal steroids at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. On returning to the Children's Hospital, he was Assistant Endocrinologist to Dr Norman Wettenhall, 1977-80 and then became Senior Endocrinologist. He was Foundation Director of the RCH Department of Endocrinology and Diabetes 1983-99 and, since 1998, has been Director, Royal Children's Hospital International, and Senior Endocrinologist. (Personal communication Garry Warne to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 17]
|
| 80. | The Medical Research Ethics Committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council was established in December 1982 and, the following year, Professor Richard Lovell was appointed inaugural chairman. He had just retired as University of Melbourne Foundation Professor of Medicine at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
[Return to page 18]
|
| 81. | Mr Ron Lambourne BSc
[Return to page 18]
|
| 82. | Mrs Patricia Kee AM was a medical laboratory technologist with personal experience of serious childhood medical conditions (Personal communication, Peter Phelan to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 18]
|
| 83. | Mr Roger B.B. Mee MB ChB FRACS (b.1944) trained in medicine at the University of Otago School of Medicine, Dunedin, New Zealand. He did his surgical training at the Auckland Hospital; the Brigham & Women's Hospital, Boston; the Children's Hospital of Boston; and the Green Lane Hospital in Auckland. From 1979-93 he was Chief Cardiac Surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne. In 1993 he joined the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio as paediatric cardiothoracic surgeon specialising in neonatal cardiac surgery, congenital heart surgery, transplantation, and thoracic and vascular surgery. (Personal communication, Roger Mee to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 19]
|
| 84. | Dr Donald Brook Cheek MD DSc FRACP (b.1924) was a 1947 University of Adelaide medical graduate who worked as a Resident Medical Officer at Royal Adelaide Hospital 1947-49. He was appointed Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide where he worked on Pink Disease with the Professor of Human Physiology and Pharmacology, Professor Cedric Stanton Hicks, 1949-51.
During the following years he gained experience as a Research Fellow at Yale University School of Medicine (1951-52), the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto (1953) and the Children's Hospital Research Foundation, University of Cincinnati 1953-56. He then moved to the University of Texas South Western Medical School where he was Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor, 1957-59. He returned to Melbourne to become a Senior Research Fellow at the Royal Children's Hospital, 1959-62, including a period as Director of a research unit on Electrolyte Metabolism. After falling out with Howard Williams over the clinical care of patients with electrolyte disturbances, he went overseas again, joining the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School, Baltimore, where he was head of the Division of Growth 1962-73, wrote Human Growth (1969) and was appointed a Professor, 1970-72. In 1973 he returned to Melbourne to take up the position of Director of the Royal Children's Hospital Research Foundation, his arrival being delayed by heart problems. He continued in the role until 1980, during which time he wrote Fetal and Postnatal Growth Hormones and Nutrition (1975). In 1980 he became Visiting Research Professor at the University of Adelaide, collaborating on zinc deficiency research in Aboriginal children in the Kimberley region. Although the deficiency was present, he and his colleagues concluded that it was not the factor responsible for growth retardation in Aboriginal children. (See Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks Papers, University of Adelaide Library, Series 14. See also Who's Who in Australia, 1971, ‘80, and '88.) [Return to page 20]
|
| 85. | Professor Sydney Lance (‘Lance') Townsend Kt VRD, MBBS MGO DTM&H FRCS FACS FRACS FRCOG FRACP FACMA FAustCOG (1912-1983) was Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Melbourne, 1951-77. He was also Dean of the Faculty of Medicine 1971-77. In 1978 he was appointed Assistant Vice-Chancellor of the University. (See The Historical Compendium to the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, http://www.jnmhugateways.unimelb.edu.au/umfm/)
[Return to page 20]
|
| 86. | David Danks established the Genetics Research Unit at the Royal Children's Hospital in 1967.
[Return to page 20]
|
| 87. | Professor Victor A. McKusick, from the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, trained a number of clinical geneticists at the Hospital including David Danks and John Rogers.
[Return to page 21]
|
| 88. | Dr Lionel Eric George Sloane MBBS FRACP FRACMA (b.1924), widely known as ‘LEG' Sloane, graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1952. He was Clinical Superintendent, Prince Henry's Hospital, 1957-58 and then gained paediatric experience in a number of Victorian Hospitals before becoming Medical Director of the Royal Children's Hospital, 1965-81, with the exception of 1977. He was Registrar, Australian College of Paediatrics, 1986-90 and, later, Honorary Consultant Paediatrician to the Hospital. (See Who's Who in Australia 1988 and 1996.)
[Return to page 21]
|
| 89. | Dr Williams established the Brunswick Family Study in 1977, recruiting as Research Fellow, Dr Allan Carmichael (later Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health and Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Tasmania). According to Professor Carmichael, the study followed 304 infants consecutively born in Brunswick, an inner Melbourne suburb, for 44 weeks in 1978. The children were later reviewed at the ages of 4 and 11 years, and the pattern of medical services used by their parents was assessed. The study found a high prevalence of postnatal problems, leading to later learning problems. (Personal communication Allan Carmichael to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 22]
|
| 90. | In the early 1960s, senior medical staff of the hospital endorsed the establishment of a Chair in Paediatric Surgery. (Personal communication Bob Fowler to Ann Westmore). However, such a professorship did not come to pass for several decades.
[Return to page 23]
|
| 91. | Professor John Medwyn Hutson MBBS Hons MD (Mon) MD (Melb) FRACS (b.1948) studied medicine at Monash University, graduating in 1972. He did his Residency at the Alfred and Royal Children's Hospitals, before gaining a scholarship earmarked for surgical research at the RCH, 1977-80. He was a Surgical Research Fellow at the Harvard Medical School, 1980-83 before gaining additional experience at the Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow.
On his return to Melbourne in 1985, he was appointed Director of the RCH Surgical Research Unit and Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Paediatric Surgery in the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics 1985-93. In 1994 he became Professor of Paediatric Surgery and Director of the Department of General Surgery at the Hospital. In 2000 he was appointed Associate Director (Clinical Research) for the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and Honorary Secretary of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' Board of Research. He has written a number of books on paediatric surgery and has been awarded patents for treatments he devised of undescended testes and male infertility. (Personal communication John Hutson to Ann Westmore. See also Who's Who in Australia 2002) [Return to page 23]
|
| 92. | The very public resignation of Professor of Surgery, Paddy Dewan.
[Return to page 23]
|
| 93. | Dr William G. (‘Bill') Cole MSc PhD FRACS (b.1942). After graduating from the University of Melbourne in 1965, Bill Cole trained in General Surgery at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and then in Orthopaedic Surgery at St Vincent's Hospital and the RCH. During a two-and-a-half year fellowship studying paediatric orthopaedic surgery and molecular biology of cartilage at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, he received further paediatric orthopaedic training as well as research training in the molecular biology and genetics of connective tissue diseases. He returned to Melbourne as a First Assistant in the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics and as an Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital in 1977 where Dr John Bateman soon joined him. Together they established the Orthopaedic Research Unit which won strong support from the National Health and Medical Research Council for work on genetically-determined skeletal dysplasias. In 1988 Dr Cole was appointed Foundation Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery in the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics and Chief Orthopaedic Surgeon within the Royal Children's Hospital. In 1992 he moved to his current positions of Professor of Surgery and Professor of Genetics, University of Toronto, and Head, Division of Orthopaedics and Senior Scientist, Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto. (Personal communication Bill Cole to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 23]
|
| 94. | See previous footnote.
[Return to page 23]
|
| 95. | Professor John Bateman BSc(Hons) PhD was Senior Professorial Research Fellow and Executive Head of the Cell and Matrix Biology Research Unit, and Associate Director of Laboratory Research at the Murdoch Institute in 2004. The unit specialises in research into skeletal dysplasias.
[Return to page 23]
|
| 96. | Peter Yule's history of the hospital suggests that much earlier, Drs Reginald Webster and Douglas Galbraith, who were doing research at the Hospital in the late 1930s and 1940s, were the first of many Children's Hospital staff members to be awarded grants by the NHMRC. (See The Royal Children's Hospital: A History of faith, science and love, p 270)
[Return to page 24]
|
| 97. | A/Professor Susan Sawyer MBBS MD FRACP (b.1960) trained in medicine at the University of Melbourne before undertaking resident training at the Royal Melbourne and Royal Children's Hospitals. After specialty paediatric training at the Children's Hospital she attended the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston where she specialised in adolescent health and respiratory medicine.
She returned to the Royal Children's Hospital in 1995 as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Paediatrics and with clinical appointments as an adolescent physician and respiratory paediatrician. In 1998 she was appointed Deputy Director of the Centre for Adolescent Health and, in 2001, Acting Head of the Department of Paediatrics, working in this role when Professor Bowes was absent. (Personal communication Susan Sawyer to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 24]
|
| 98. | Dr Barry Rex Catchlove MB BS FRACMA FRACP FCHSE (b.1942) was Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Children's Hospital 1981-90 after holding similar positions at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, 1972-80. (See Who's Who in Australia 2002)
[Return to page 25]
|
| 99. | The Uncle Bob Scholarships were established in 1960 by the Uncle Bob Club, a charity formed by a group of donors who contributed the price of a glass of beer (a ‘bob') each week to support an up-and-coming researcher at the Royal Children's Hospital. Seventeen scholarship winners up to 2004 became professors. (Personal communication, Don Kinsey to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 25]
|
| 100. | Anne Cronin worked as both a research scientist and administrator in the Genetics Research Unit, starting in 1976. By the time the Murdoch Institute for Research into Birth Defects was incorporated in 1986, she had left the laboratory and was full-time in the role of business manager, having gained management and accounting qualifications. She is now the Director of Operations and Finance of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. (Personal communication, Anne Cronin to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 25]
|
| 101. | Murdoch Children's Research Institute scholarships
[Return to page 26]
|
| 102. | Dr Robert (‘Bob') Fowler Jr MD FRACS (b.1928) graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1950. After completing his resident and registrar training at the Alfred Hospital, he was research scholar at the Baker Medical Research Institute, 1953-54. In 1955, he joined the Children's Hospital as a surgical registrar, a post he combined with training in general surgery at the Alfred Hospital. From 1958-60 he held a Fulbright Scholarship in conjunction with a Research Fellowship at the University of Cincinnati where he worked with nephrologist, Dr Clark West, on immunology, transplantation and renal disease. On returning to Melbourne in the early 1960s he undertook a research MD degree at the Children's Hospital with a thesis on homotransplantation studies.
For three decades from 1962 he was a surgeon at the hospital, holding positions including Head of the Surgical Unit 1975-88, Chairman of the Senior Medical Staff 1975-76, and Senior Surgeon 1988-92. In 1993 on retiring from public hospital practice, he was appointed Honorary Consultant Surgeon to the hospital and continued in private surgical practice until 1998. Throughout his career he combined his clinical and administrative work with research and teaching appointments at the RCH. In particular, he was Deputy Director of the Surgical Research Department 1961-68 and a member of the Board of Research, 1976-77. He authored or co-authored numerous research articles on body water metabolism and circulation, immunology and transplantation, and surgery to correct pelvic trauma and abnormalities in childhood. He taught paediatric surgery to several generations of University of Melbourne medical undergraduate and postgraduate students, 1957-92, and was on the University's Board of Examiners in Surgery, 1964-93. (Personal communication, Bob Fowler to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 26]
|
| 103. | After Doug Stephens went overseas in 1975, Dr Fowler wrote a letter to the Hospital's Committee of Management suggesting the establishment of a scholarship earmarked for surgical research. Three people applied, including Dr Hutson, who duly won the scholarship and so began working at the Hospital. (Personal communication Bob Fowler to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 26]
|
| 104. | The "difficulties with management"occurred in 1968, about three years after Dr Fowler returned from overseas. Dr Fowler believed the hospital was seeking to alter unilaterally his contract of employment to less favourable terms than applied to other members of the clinical staff. Following these difficulties, he reduced somewhat his level of involvement with the Hospital, but continued as a senior member of the specialist surgical staff and remained active in research until the early 1990s. (Personal communication Bob Fowler to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 26]
|
| 105. | Dr Henry Norman Burgess Wettenhall AM, MD BS FRCP FRACP (1915-2000), affectionately known as "Wettie", was the son of Dr Roly Wettenhall, an honorary dermatologist at the Children's Hospital, 1920-25. Dr Wettenhall (Sr) wanted his son to become a diplomat but instead, he chose medicine, graduating from the University of Melbourne in 1940. He was discharged from the Navy due to illness in 1943 and joined the Children's Hospital as a Resident, remaining on the staff for much of the next four decades until his retirement in 1980. He was at various times, a Senior Physician 1948-73, Dean of the Clinical School, 1961-64, and head of the Endocrine Clinic, 1972-80.
He was Australia's first specialist in paediatric endocrinology and the second doctor in Australia to prescribe pituitary growth hormone, according to Dr Garry Warne. He learned his specialty at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, where he worked in 1956 and again 1971-72. By 1962, he had converted one of his paediatric clinics into a de facto endocrine clinic. In 1972, the Hospital recognised his expertise and appointed him head of the newly created official Endocrine Clinic. He organised trials of growth hormone and was for some years Chairman of the Human Pituitary Advisory Committee, an advisory body to Federal health authorities. On his retirement he stimulated his colleagues to establish the Australasian Paediatric Endocrine Group and subsequently played an active role in it. (Personal communication Garry Warne to Ann Westmore and Jane Halliday to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 27]
|
| 106. | Dr Cliff Hosking MD FRACOP FRCPA (b.1938) studied medicine at the University of Queensland, graduating in 1962. After working in Queensland and New Zealand hospitals, he moved to Melbourne in 1969 as a research fellow at the Royal Children's Hospital Research Foundation. After further studies at the Institute of Child Health in London he became medical officer to the Immunology Laboratory at the RCH, 1972-80. Over the period, 1980-91 he was Director of Immunology at the RCH and from 1984-91 he combined this position with Chairman of the Hospital's Division of Pathology. In 1987-90 he was an Associate Research Director at the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, an opportunity that "broadened my education and enhanced that organisation by bringing some clinical focus and expertise".
He moved to Newcastle, NSW, in 1991 and spent the next decade as staff specialist (part-time) in paediatric immunology at the John Hunter Hospital. Then, from 1992-99 he chaired its division of paediatrics, while also working as a consultant immunologist to CSL (1992-97). In 1999-2001 he was director of clinical governance at the Belmont District Hospital in the Hunter Valley and from 2002-04 he was visiting medical officer in paediatric immunology and allergy at the John Hunter Hospital. He maintains close contact with the RCH Department of Allergy through a continuing research association with allergist, Dr David Hill. (Personal communication Cliff Hosking to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 27]
|
| 107. | Professor Robert George ‘Bob' Adler MB BS PhD FRACP FRANZCP (b.1945) trained in medicine at the University of Sydney, and spent 1972-75 as a Psychiatrist Registrar at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. After some years as a Consultant Child Psychiatrist he was appointed Senior Lecturer in Child Psychiatry at Newcastle University, NSW, 1980-84. He was Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science at the Royal Children's Hospital 1985-98 and, after resigning from the position he continued in private psychiatry practice in Melbourne. (See Who's Who in Australia 2002)
[Return to page 28]
|
| 108. | Dr Nathaniel Albert Alfred (‘Nate') Myers AM, MD FRACS FRCS (1922-2004), graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1945 and the following year joined the Children's Hospital as a Resident Medical Officer. He stayed at the Hospital 1946-1954, including the last three years as Chief Resident Medical Officer. He seriously considered becoming a physician, a surgeon and a paediatric psychiatrist, and eventually chose the second of these.
He studied surgery at the Children's and Royal Melbourne Hospitals then undertook further training in thoracic surgery at the Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children, London, 1955-57. Returning to Melbourne, he began a private consultant practice in 1957 and also worked at the Royal Children's Hospital as Surgeon to Outpatients, 1957-1970; Senior Surgeon, 1967-1987, Chairman of the Department of Surgery, and Chairman of Senior Medical Staff. . He continued as Emeritus Consultant Surgeon to the Hospital after 2000. His particular area of expertise was thoracic surgery and together with Dr Russell Howard, he pioneered surgery for oesophageal atresia. He was a prolific contributor to the medical literature and was editor of several major international surgical journals. Throughout much of his working life, he was a Professorial Associate of the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics. He was also active in professional activities, being a founder member of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' Board of Paediatric Surgery, Chairman of the RACS Victorian State Committee and of the RACS Archives Committee. He established the RCH Medical Alumni Association during the 1980s and remained its secretary until the year before his death. (See Who's Who in Australia 1988) [Return to page 28]
|
| 109. | Dr Peter Griffith Jones MB BS MS PhD FRCS FRACS FACS FAAP (1922-1995) graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1945. In 1948-49, he undertook paediatric surgical training in Cleveland, Ohio and then proceeded to train at the Hospital for Sick Children in London and at Cambridge University. After returning to Melbourne in 1953 he joined the Royal Children's Hospital as a staff surgeon and a demonstrator and later as a clinical instructor in paediatric surgery and a lecturer in community medicine at the University of Melbourne. He remained on the staff of the Hospital until his retirement in 1988.
His major surgical contributions were in surgery to the pancreas, abdomen and heart. He also specialised in the diagnosis and treatment of tumours in childhood. In the mid-1970s, he contributed to the surgical separation of two sets of Siamese twins. His friend and colleague Dr Nate Myers once commented that "To operate with Jones was a pleasure - one of our visitors, commenting on our co-operation, once said he had not previously seen a ‘four-handed surgeon'." He played an active role in many medical organisations including the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the Australian Association of Paediatric Surgeons and its British and Pacific equivalents, the Association of Surgeons, and the Medical Defence Association of Victoria. He was also the foundation editor of the Australian Journal of Paediatrics. In later life he completed a PhD on Dr Rodrigo Lopez, personal physician to Queen Elizabeth I who was convicted of treason for plotting to poison her. He also had considerable expertise in heraldry and designed the coat of arms for the Royal Children's Hospital. (Personal communication Julie Jones to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 29]
|
| 110. | Clinical Paediatric Surgery: Diagnosis and Management by the Staff, compiled and edited by PG Jones, Blackwell, Oxford, 1976 (Revised version with Alan Woodward published 1986)
[Return to page 29]
|
| 111. | Dr Peter Ellis Campbell MD FRACPA FRCPA MACLM (b.1930) graduated in medicine in 1953. He then undertook resident training at the Geelong Hospital, 1954-56. He became a trainee in Pathology with the Hospitals and Charities Commission in 1956 and spent the next five years in a range of metropolitan hospitals' pathology departments, including that of the Royal Children's Hospital. The year he spent at the Children's Hospital was seminal and, on graduating as a Pathologist, he was appointed to the Pathology Department under Drs John Perry and Alan Williams. A year later he was awarded the Uncle Bob Scholarship and spent a year at the St Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.
After returning to the RCH, he was appointed Director of Anatomical Pathology. At this time his interest in paediatric tumours led to co-editorship of a book with Dr Peter Jones (see following footnote) and an MD. In 1976, Dr Williams developed an interest in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and when he retired, Dr Campbell performed most of the relevant autopsies, counselling families who had lost a child to SIDS, and working closely with the Sudden Infant Death Research Foundation. In 1993 he retired from the RCH and became a forensic pathologist, joining the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine where he continued to work part time. (Personal communication Peter Campbell to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 29]
|
| 112. | Peter G Jones and Peter E Campbell (eds), Tumours of Infancy and Childhood by the Staff of the Royal Children's Hospital, Oxford; Blackwell Scientific Publications, Philadelphia, 1976
[Return to page 29]
|
| 113. | Roger K Hall, Pediatric Orofacial Medicine and Pathology, Chapman and Hall Medical, London, 1994
[Return to page 29]
|
| 114. | Dr Cyril Minty was a radiation oncologist with a special interest in paediatric oncology. He was a consultant appointed by the Peter MacCallum Hospital to the Royal Children's Hospital and participated in the Combined Therapy Clinic and in the Children's Cancer Study Group clinical research studies on leukaemia.
[Return to page 29]
|
| 115. | Dr Russell Norfolk Howard ED MD FRCS FRACS (1905-1992) moved to Melbourne from Tasmania to study medicine, graduating in 1928. After two years at the Melbourne Hospital he undertook his Residency at the Children's Hospital in 1930 and served as Medical Superintendent, 1931-33. He gained further experience at the Women's and Austin Hospitals before undertaking additional surgical training in England. From 1938-46 he was Honorary Surgeon to Outpatients at the Children's Hospital and, after active service during World War II, he returned to the Hospital where he was Surgeon to Inpatients from 1946. In 1952, he accepted a position as the first full time Chief General Paediatric Surgeon, a position he held with distinction until he retired in 1970 having set a high standard of patient care and having introduced several novel surgical procedures.
He was President of the Australian Paediatric Association 1966-1967 and, for some years after 1970, he was Honorary Consulting Surgeon to the Hospital. (See Who's Who in Australia 1988). [Return to page 29]
|
| 116. | Dr James A (‘Jim') Keipert MBBS DCH FRCPE (b.1922) graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1945 and joined the Children's Hospital in 1964. A general paediatrician with a special interest in paediatric dermatology, he was Physician to the Royal Children's Hospital 1970-87 and Senior Associate, the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics at the Hospital until his retirement in 1988. (Personal communication Jim Keipert to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 30]
|
| 117. | Dr Ian J. Hopkins MB BS MD MRACP FRACP graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1957. After completing his general paediatric training at the Royal Children's Hospital and gaining an MD, he undertook specialist training in child neurology at the Hammersmith Hospital and the National Hospital, Queen Square (1963-64) and at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the University of Kentucky Department of Neurology (1965-66). In 1966 he was appointed to the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics as Second Assistant, later becoming First Assistant and Associate Professor, teaching generations of undergraduate and postgraduate students in child neurology and general paediatrics. At the same time, he was appointed assistant neurologist at the RCH, becoming neurologist in 1969 and senior neurologist in 1988. He retired from his University appointment in 1990 and from the RCH in 2001. (Personal communication Dr Hopkins to Dr Westmore)
[Return to page 31]
|
| 118. | Professor Graeme Ryan AC, MB BS PhD FRCPA FRACP, was Dean of the Faculty (over the period when it changed its name from the Faculty of Medicine to the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences) from 1986 to 1995. (See the Historical Compendium to the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, http://www.jnmhugateways.unimelb.edu.au/umfm/)
[Return to page 31]
|
| 119. | Royal Australian College of General Practitioners
[Return to page 32]
|
| 120. | The Centre for Adolescent Health was established in 1991.
[Return to page 33]
|
| 121. | Professor Peter Smith, RFD MD FRACP FRCPA studied science and medicine at the University of Queensland, graduating in 1970. He trained in paediatrics at the Brisbane Children's Hospital and undertook specialist clinical and research training in haematology and oncology at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, and at St Judes Children's Hospital in Memphis.
Returning to Brisbane in the 1980s he was Foundation Director of Oncology at the Royal Children's Hospital and in 1988, Professor and Deputy Head, Department of Pathology, University of Queensland and Foundation Chairman of a joint experimental oncology program established by the University of Queensland and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research. Having established a strong reputation in childhood cancer research, he moved to Melbourne in 1994 as Professor/Director of Paediatric Haematology/Oncology at the Royal Children's Hospital and University of Melbourne, and Divisional Director of Laboratory Services for the newly amalgamated Women's and Children's Hospitals. He was Stevenson Professor of Paediatrics 1997-2001, after which he moved to Auckland to become Dean, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, The University of Auckland. (See http://www.health.auckland.ac.nz/administration/peter_smith.html) [Return to page 33]
|
| 122. | Mr David Ronald White BCom BA MBA (b.1944) held the Legislative Council seat of Doutta Galla for the Australian Labor Party 1976-96 and, after serving as a Minister for Minerals and Energy, and for Water Supply, he was Victorian Health Minister for several years in the early 1990s.
[Return to page 33]
|
| 123. | Dr John Pryde Paterson AO, Bcom PhD (1942-2003) initially worked in the areas of environment and planning and water resources. From 1982-84 he was president of the Hunter District Water Board and from 1984-88, Director-General of Water Resources in Victoria. He then moved departments to become Director-General of Community Services Victoria (CSV) 1988-92. In 1992 he designed the amalgamation of CSV with the State's Health Department to form the Victorian Department of Health and Community Services which he headed 1992-96. (See Rob Hudson, "Tributes flow for Dr John Paterson," Human Services News, March 2003)
[Return to page 33]
|
| 124. | Dr John Hurst was a General Practitioner who ran Casualty for several years. Dr Kester Brown recalls that he organised for a pharmacist and he (Dr Brown) to teach Resident Medical Officers about common medications for an hour a week. Over the course of a three-month period, this interchange resulted in usage of paracetamol largely replacing the use of aspirin because of the latter's potential toxicity. (Personal communication Kester Brown to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 34]
|
| 125. | Professor David Penington, AC MA DM BCh FRCP FRACP FRCPA (b.1930) was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Melbourne 1978-83, and Vice-Chancellor 1988-95. (See The Historical Compendium to the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, http://www.jnmhugateways.unimelb.edu.au/umfm/ and Who's Who in Australia 2002)
[Return to page 34]
|
| 126. | Ms Jenny Gough BA DipEd GDipEd Admin GCertTESOL Med (b.1951) trained in education at LaTrobe, Ballarat and Melbourne Universities. She was responsible for supporting and developing the new Child and Adolescent Health curriculum for 5th year medical students. She now devises and conducts teaching skills development programs for staff, conducts relevant educational evaluation and research, and supports other education programs in the Department of Paediatrics.
She is developing and refining an innovative program in which medical staff "rehearse" with actors various difficult conversations they may have to have, such as breaking bad news to parents. (Personal communication Jenny Gough to Ann Westmore) [Return to page 34]
|
| 127. | Dr Michael Marks MB BS MD MPH FRACP (b.1961) trained in medicine at the University of Melbourne and joined the Royal Children's Hospital in 1987, completing his specialist qualification in paediatrics in 1991. He completed a research doctorate (MD) in the Department of Paediatrics in 1994 and then spent two years in Boston, gaining a Master of Public Health at Harvard School of Public Health. He returned to the Department of Paediatrics as a Senior Lecturer in 1996 and became co-ordinator of the undergraduate paediatric course in 1998. He subsequently led the Department's introduction of the new medical curriculum (first cohort of new students in 2003). He also co-ordinated the Advanced Medical Science (AMS) Paediatric Unit from 2001, the AMS being a year of research in the new curriculum undertaken by all undergraduate students. (Personal communication Michael Marks to Ann Westmore)
[Return to page 34]
|
 |
Witness to the History of Australian Medicine |  |
© The University of Melbourne 2005-16
Published by eScholarship Research Centre, using the Web Academic Resource Publisher
http://witness.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/references1.html