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A Celebration of Partnership
Department of Surgery - A Short History |
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The University of Melbourne created its first clinical Department of Surgery located at The Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1955 with the appointment of Maurice Ewing as the inaugural James Stewart Professor of Surgery.
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In 1956, Professor Ewing’s Department of Surgery was primarily based at the Alfred Hospital and consisted of approximately three academic staff with the theoretical responsibility for academic surgery in all the teaching hospitals of Melbourne. The premises comprised some temporary laboratories and offices, constructed along an old walkway from what was then the main ward block.
Initially, the only beds allocated to Professor Ewing were by courtesy of one of the inpatient surgeons. At first, as inpatient surgeons took leave on rotation, Ewing admitted patients to their units, until the Alfred’s sixth separate general surgical unit was formed in 1957 to accommodate the new department. In addition to the unit at the Alfred Hospital, a sub-unit of 15 beds was established at The Royal Melbourne Hospital. |
The original Department of
Surgery office at the Alfred Hospital in 1956. |
The first ever kidney transplant in Australia was performed by Professor Maurice Ewing of the University Department of Surgery at The Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1956, after the mortuary was converted into a temporary operating theatre. This was followed with pioneering work in kidney dialysis in the late 1950s at the Alfred Hospital. When patients with complications of post-operative acute kidney failure had to be sent to Sydney to be dialysed, Professor Ewing with typical humour noted, it was ‘inappropriate for our Victorian dirty linen to be publicly exposed and washed clean in New South Wales’. Professor Ewing set about raising funds for the first artificial kidney machine in Victoria and installed it in the Department of Surgery at the Alfred Hospital in 1958.
The creation of the Monash Medical School in 1961 led to a Monash Chair of Surgery being established at the Alfred Hospital. This resulted, in early 1963, in the transfer of the University of Melbourne’s Department of Surgery to The Royal Melbourne Hospital campus. By 1964, the beds comprised 31 beds in Ward 6 East and 14 beds in Ward 6 West. This move resulted in the opening of an additional surgical ward and a corresponding increase in the outpatient and operating theatre sessions. In addition, the number of Resident Medical Officers attached to the surgical unit was increased from one to two, and a Registrar was appointed. The move also brought to the RMH the Renal Haemodialysis Unit, operated jointly by the University Departments of Surgery and Medicine.
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 ‘The Cottage’, the temporary home
of the Department of Surgery during
the mid 1960s. Located next to the
then Residents’ Quarters, this site
now houses the WEHI building.
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Initially after the move from the Alfred Hospital, the departmental offices were in ‘The Cottage’, an old fibro building located behind the north wing of the hospital, next to the Residents’ Quarters. Later, these buildings were demolished for the new Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research premises. Then in 1965, the department moved into the fifth and sixth floors of the newly built Clinical Sciences Building, allowing for the development of an integrated teaching and research facility, the first such development in Australia.
The joint RMH and University of Melbourne facility provided laboratories, offices, seminar rooms and an operating theatre for the University Department of Surgery, similar facilities for the University Department of Medicine, as well as accommodating hospital departments and laboratories. In 1988, departmental activities expanded into sections of the Centre for Medical Research building. |
In 1968, an interim Renal Unit was established and a “tissue typing” service in conjunction with the renal transplantation program was introduced. This was followed, in the mid 1970s, with the establishment of a Tissue Typing Laboratory, to assist in the testing of patients in transplant programs, not only in the RMH, but for other major public hospitals in Melbourne. In 1976, a Burns Unit was established within the hospital, arising from research undertaken in skin grafting within the Department of Surgery.
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The department under Maurice Ewing established a reputation for the excellence of its teaching, and for leadership and major research contributions in the fields of surgical metabolism, organ transplantation and transplantation immunology, and surgical education. Professor Ewing retired at the end of 1977 and was succeeded by Professor Gordon Clunie as the James Stewart Professor and Head of Department, commencing in September 1978.
During this time, a major change in the clinical organisation of the department was the move towards greater integration with The Royal Melbourne Hospital. The initial structure of the clinical service delivery was for the department to run a General Surgical Unit at the RMH, using mostly its own staff. Links were established or continued with the Surgical Renal Transplant Service, the Burns Service, the Parenteral Nutrition Service and the Lymphoma Service. With the reorganisation of the hospital surgical units in the mid 1980s, the department became closely associated with other hospital surgical units, such as the Colorectal Unit and the Vascular Unit. A Clinical Oncological Society of Australia, Clinical Trials Data Centre was established in the Department in 1982 to assist with the running and analysis of trials. |
Professor Maurice Ewing at his desk, c.1970s. |
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ABOVE: Artificial kidney
equipment in 1963.
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BELOW: A fourth year student
carrying out a gastroscopy
under the guidance of
Department of Surgery staff
member Robert Thomas
in 1976.
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ABOVE: Surgeons at work in the Wellcome Theatre, part of the Department of Surgery’s facilities in 1964. The theatre was equipped with a ceiling mounted x-ray machine, from which pictures could be transmitted by television to an adjacent monitoring room and stored there for 10 minutes.
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The strong emphasis on teaching established under Professor Ewing, continued under Professor Clunie. Initiatives introduced included the establishment of a series of student debates on topics of general, legal and ethical interest, in an attempt to broaden students’ perceptions of medicine. Research interests in the fields of transplantation surgery and oncology surgery continued. The Melbourne Tumour Biology Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research was established within the Department of Surgery in 1980 and the Brockhoff Plastic Surgery Research Unit was established officially in 1994, although members of the Plastic Surgery Unit at The Royal Melbourne Hospital had undertaken research in the department for many years. The department expanded geographically in 1992 with the creation of a sub-unit at the Western Hospital, under the direction of Professor Robert Thomas. Teaching and training of students increased to include a number of country hospitals.
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 Professor Gordon Clunie in his office, c.1980.
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With the appointment of Professor Gordon Clunie as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the end of 1995, Professor Robert Thomas was appointed during 1996 as the Head of the Department of Surgery, pending the appointment of the James Stewart Professor of Surgery. Professor Andrew Kaye commenced his appointment as the James Stewart Professor of Surgery and Head of the Department of Surgery at The Royal Melbourne Hospital/Western Hospital in January 1997.
Up until the end of 1996, the department had functioned with semi-autonomous laboratories including Molecular Genetics, Transplant Immunology, Cardiovascular and Neuroscience, as well as the Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research and with the Brockhoff Plastic Surgery Research Unit. |
Following the appointment of Professor Kaye, there was re-evaluation and change in the emphasis of research, with the development of a focus on tumour biology. This has resulted in the restructuring of the laboratories, with research programs organised to focus on cell signalling, molecular genetics and brain tumour biology. Close collaboration with the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research has resulted in translational research programs involving many tumour types. The department and its activities have been integral in the establishment of the Melbourne Comprehensive Cancer Centre, with Professor Kaye being the inaugural Director of the Centre that includes The Royal Melbourne Hospital, the Royal Women’s Hospital, the University of Melbourne and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.
All clinical academic staff in the department maintain an active involvement in the care of patients at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Western Hospital. The department continues its clinical and laboratory research programs, both solely or in collaboration with the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, other departments of the University of Melbourne, clinical staff of The Royal Melbourne Hospital and associated research institutes.
The department has had close research collaborations internationally, including with Harvard University through Professor Peter Black, University of Southern California (Professor Michael Apuzzo), The University of Geneva (Professor Nicholas de Tribolet), University of Toronto (Professor James Rutka) and Shinshu University in Matsumoto (Professor Shigeaki Kobayashi). |
