SIR WILLIAM MacEWEN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18991, 12 October 1923, Page 4

SIR WILLIAM MacEWEN.

A FAMOUS SCOTTISH SURGEON. DARING PIONEER RESEARCH WORK. (From Oub Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, October 11. Sir William MacEweu, the famous Scottish surgeon, now aged 75, who has been in Wellington for about a day and a-lmlf on board the Tahiti en route to Australia, received a very cordial welcome from some of the former New Zealand students who knew him, and of whom there are severalin Wellington. He i.s a remarkable man, who has been president of the. British Medical Association, and is now president of tho International Society of Surgery, in which capacity he will attend the forthcoming Australian Coiigress of Medicine. During the war Sir William Mac Ewen. was consulting surgeon to the Admiralty' in Scotland. Ho is an honorary member of the St. Petersburg (Petrograd) Imperial Medical Academy, the Royal Medical Academy of Rome, the American Surgical Society, the German Surgical Congress, and a corresponding member of the Surgical Society of Paris, and he has been professor of surgery at Glasgow University since 1892. His publications include works on “Osteotomy,” “Pyogenic Infective Disease of the Brain and Spinal Cord,” “Meningitis,” “Abscess of the Brain,” “Hernia and Its Radical Cure,” “Methods of Cure of Aneurism,” and “Transplantation of Bone by Bone Grafting.” “Sir William Mac Ewen,” says the Post, “is one of those advanced specialists to whom the world owes much for his daring work in pioneer research work, much of which was undertaken in spite of the opposition of the majority of his medical colleagues. He has made a special study ‘of the brain, and has carried out many operations and experiments which, having resulted satisfactorily,"have blazed a new trail for others to follow. Likewise lie is a foremost authority on tho transplantation of bone by grafting, in which he has also carried out a great deal of pioneering work. As a teacher, Sir William Mac Ewen has few equals, for with him surgery is a passion. It was said of him once by a. French colleague who visited Glasgow, ‘Ho is not only a great brain surgeon, he is a surgeon with a groat brain.’ Like every pioneer he i.s a thinker first and an operator second. His hook on the bones is a new work full of originality and daring. It is said that the ‘dry bones’ have become alive in a scientific sense since he turned his attention to them. “Born at Rothesay, in the Isle of Bute, ho studied as a student in Glasgow uiid was early appointed to a surgical post in tho Royal Infirmary of that city. The Glasgow Royal Infirmary is ono of tho sacred places of modern surgery. It was there that Lord Lister made his tremendous discovery of antiseptics. It was there also that Sir William Mac Ewen began his operative treatment of brain injuries. Both of these advances were opposed with intense'; even extreme bitterness, so that the Infirmary has twice in its history been a battle ground of new and old ideas. The bitterness against Lord Lister was so great that he was accused of killing his patients by his antiseptic. The same kind of grotesque accusations were hurled later at Sir William Mac Ewen. Fortunately for humanity both were men of groat courage and enormous tenacity of purpose. They persisted in their labours, it is said, behind locked doors, and those efforts remade the surgery of Europe.”