biographies

Tracy, Richard Thomas (1826 - 1874)

M.D (Glas.) L.R.C.S.I.

Born
19 September 1826
Limerick, Ireland
Died
7 November 1874
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Medical practitioner, Gynaecologist and Obstetrician
Summary

Richard Tracy M.D. was one of the founders of the Melbourne Lying-in Hospital and Infirmary for the Diseases of Women in East Melbourne in 1856. He served as one of its Honorary Physicians until shortly before his death in 1874.

Details

Transcription of item written by Dr Colin Macdonald and published in "The Book of Remembrance", The Royal Women's Hospital, Melbourne, 1956.


RICHARD THOMAS TRACY
(1856 - 1874)

Richard Thomas Tracy was born on 19th September 1826, in the old city of Limerick, in the west of Ireland, and with his only brother received an education for entrance to Trinity College, University of Dublin. As several members of his mother’s family had been clergymen of the Anglican Church, it was desired that her two sons should qualify themselves for this calling, but at 16 years of age, Richard made up his mind to enter the medical profession, and his love for it never abated.

He did not proceed straight to the University, but worked for a year or so as a wardsman and dresser in the County Limerick Infirmary (a beginning he claimed of much benefit in his after career). In 1845, then aged 19, he went to reside with his brother, who had decided for the law at Trinity College, Dublin, and commenced his medical studies proper. During each of the three succeeding summer vacations, he volunteered for work with the Irish Board of Health. This was the period of the great famine, and typhus was desolating Ireland; at Celbridge, near Dublin, Tracy himself contracted typhus, being very lucky to survive. At this time a medical qualification could be obtained in three years, and in 1848 Tracy gained the Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, immediately afterwards leaving for Paris, observing much surgical work during that eventful year of revolution, the year of 1848, when Louis Phillipe was overthrown.

In December of this year of 1848 Tracy went to Glasgow, working there in charge of the City Cholera Hospital of 700 beds. In May 1849 he took the Degree of M.D. in the University of Glasgow, and returned to Ireland to take charge of the dispensary in Kings County; but this sphere of action proved much too limited, and he crossed to London to this brother, then residing as a law student in Lincoln’s Inn. He worked as a locum for 12 months in a partnership at Reading, Berkshire, and then received a nomination for assistant surgeoncy in the army; but this he decided not to accept, because having become engaged, entering the army would have prevented him getting married. Negotiations for a partnership in London not materialising, Tracy at this stage was a little perplexed as to his future course of action.

Letters had been received from Adelaide, South Australia, from some relatives of his intended wife, telling of an excellent opening for practice there, but there were also communications from relatives of his own, telling of the prospects in Canada. What was it to be, Canada or Australia? His ultimate decision was quickly made one evening in 1851, in his brother’s rooms in Lincoln’s Inn. A coin was spun, and Australia won the toss. Tracy, always a man for quick decision, almost immediately left for Ireland and married his cousin, Miss Sibthorpe, in Limerick. After a fortnight’s honeymoon in London, largely spent in visiting the great National Exhibition in Hyde Park, they left for Australia.

Through a friend of his brother, he had secured the appointment of surgeon to a new ship called the "Ballangeich", then on the berth for Melbourne and Adelaide. So in this ship, Dr. and Mrs Tracy sailed on the 16th May 1851, arriving in Hobson’s Bay three months later. After a few days in Melbourne, where the disembarking passengers entertained them at a dinner at the Royal Hotel, the Tracys continued their voyage to Adelaide, meeting with most disastrous weather being actually 26 days before reaching that port from Melbourne. Tracy settled in North Adelaide and met many kind friends, in particular one whom he had previously known well in Dublin, Dr. Eades, who later came to Melbourne, and was always one of Tracy’s strongest supporters.

Towards the end of the year 1851, the news of the discovery of gold in Victoria emptied Adelaide of nearly all its male inhabitants, and in the middle of February 1852, a few weeks after his eldest daughter Eva was born, Tracy started, in company with Mr. James Bonwick, later to be the well known geographer and historian, to try his fortune on the goldfields. They prospected without success on the Loddon and in Bendigo, and it was at this town he first commenced medical practice in Victoria. But the goldfield atmosphere did not suit him. And so in June 1852, Tracy returned to Adelaide, soon afterwards coming to Melbourne with this wife and infant daughter. Here he began practice in Brunswick St., Fitzroy on 1st September, 1852. He was a success from the first, soon gaining a reputation both in the profession and with the public. Tracy’s first home, long since demolished, in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, consisted of four small rooms, for which he paid the then exorbitant rent of seven guineas a week. Here on occasions he had to entertain the Medical Society, only a small body at the time, in the largest of his rooms, 10 feet by 12, so economy of space was imperative; with Dr Eades, his close friend, sitting on the piano, two others on the cupboards in the recesses, and some finding a place on the window-sills. In 1854 he built a two-storied house on the west side of Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, then known as Great Brunswick Street and the main arterial outlet to the northern suburbs. In Tracy’s time this house was numbered 139, now (1955) it is No. 165 and housing a large Italian family running a sweet shop and milk bar. A contemporary source states that at the time when Tracy left Fitzroy, this unpretentious residence in Brunswick Street was as well known as any public building in Victoria.

Ten years later, that is 1864, Tracy built what was described as a two-storied mansion at 190 Collins Street East. It is believed this stood two allotments from the east side of the present Masonic Hall.

At first Tracy’s busy practice was general, but gradually changed to the speciality of diseases of women and that was to bring him high repute. In this, his warm human sympathy was excited by the maternity needs of the poorer people. In John Maund he found a ready collaborator in an idea that became a reality in 1856 with their leasing of 41 Albert Street, East Melbourne, for a private maternity hospital, and its rapid adoption as a public charity, the Lying-In Hospital.

Maund saw little of the hospital beyond its founding, but Tracy laboured ceaselessly and unselfishly for it for eighteen years. He was a most earnest believer in it; its defender against all critics.

Because of his close association with the Hospital, Tracy’s practice became directed to diseases of women and children, and his reputation in this speciality soon spread throughout Australia.

After his death it was written: "Dr. Tracy was most ready to acknowledge the valuable advantage he himself obtained through his connection with the Hospital... It will be impossible, when speaking of the Lying-In Hospital, not to associate Dr. Tracy with it, and in remembering him, the institution he was so instrumental in founding will always come into our minds. He and it were mutually indebted, for while he owed to it a great deal of his professional success, he was unwearied in his efforts to advance its usefulness and maintain its prestige".

All accounts indicate Tracy was a man of clear practical mind, commonsense, and strong will. He also had remarkable self reliance, which would have procured for him a leading position in any circumstance or community. Impatient of humbug or pretence, frequently he was impulsive and quick tempered, but always full of kindness and warmheartedness. He was singularly prompt in emergencies, and equally remarkable for patience and endurance, when these were required. A fast and true friend, generous, liberal and open handed in the extreme.

Never a public man in the accepted sense of the word, yet his public service (the Women’s Hospital apart) was not without note. He was actively associated with the civic and church work of the Fitzroy district – a founding trustee of St. Mark’s Church of England, Fitzroy, the first health officer of that municipality, and a member of the local bench of Honorary Magistrates.

He was also active in the Volunteer Militia movement, and a surgeon of the old East Melbourne Artillery Corps from its foundation to his death. Tracy was a foundation member too of the Victorian Medical Association (founded late 1852), and he joined the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Victoria when it was formed three years later. With other leading doctors, he worked for the union of the two organisations. This was accomplished with the formation of the Medical Society of Victoria, of which Dr. Tracy was President in 1860. By common consent, Tracy was looked on as the representative of Victorian medicine, and in every movement in which the collective interests of the profession were concerned, he was always foremost with his support. His remarks were always listened to with the attention which those thoroughly conversant with the subject and capable of expressing themselves well, invariably command. Dr. Tracy was a frequent contributor to the "Australian Medical Journal". His work and reputation were recognised in 1871 by the Obstetrical Society of London electing him an Honorary Fellow, a rare compliment of which Tracy was exceedingly proud. At the time, the list of Honorary British Fellows amounted to nine only.

A paper written by Tracy was given in 1870 to the Obstetrical Society of London and appeared in its Transactions of 1871. This paper was read by his colleague at the Lying-In Hospital, Dr. L.J. Martin, then visiting London.

Dr. Martin was one of the then three Honorary Physicians to the Hospital. In 1867 Martin had succeeded Dr. Turnbull, who was Maund’s successor. At this time the three physicians were Tracy, Martin and G.H. Fetherston, all Anglo Irishmen. Tracy was from Limerick, Martin from Dundalk and Fetherston from Roscommon.

G.H. Fetherston was a Resident Surgeon at the Women’s from 1860-65, and there, in 1864, was born his son, later Dr. R.H. Fetherston.

Tracy’s paper to the Obstetrical Society of London was entitled "a short history and description of the Lying-In Hospital and Infirmary for diseases of women and children".

To this time, Tracy had performed nine cases of ovariotomy, with six recoveries and three deaths. He had also performed the operation of repair to vesico-vaginal fistula 20 times, with perfect success in every case except one.

Another operation he had performed over 30 times was cure of ruptured perineum, including the modification for permanent cure of prolapsus uteri.

It was in this paper that Tracy described how, when he left England in 1851, he had never seen the operation for cure of vesico-vaginal fistula, ruptured perineum or ovariotomy performed. He mentioned this more particularly as it gave him an opportunity of gratefully acknowledging the kindness of Mr. Spencer Wells, the distinguished London surgeon. Tracy stated his first case of ovariotomy caused him great anxiety, and he could not have entered in the task with anything like confidence but for the minute and elaborate advice most kindly sent from England by Dr. Wells.

When the Medical School of the University was founded in 1862, Tracy was appointed the lecturer in diseases of women and children. This appointment was noted as one for which he was well qualified "not only by reason of his special knowledge, but also on account of his happy manner of conveying information, for he was not only an easy, fluent speaker, but he had the rare faculty of being able to impart what he knew to others, so as to be perfectly understood."

Tracy’s health began to fail during 1871, after twenty-three years of incessant labour. A sea trip home was advised, and he left by the mail steamer "Mooltan" in February 1873. Before leaving, he was entertained at dinner by the Medical Society (in which he was greatly esteemed) and a number of his friends and patients gave him £600 to be expended at his discretion in a service of plate or other permanent memorial. It was written at the time that no man ever left the Colony on a visit to the Old Country, accompanied by more sincere wishes for his restoration to health.

On leaving Australia, even then a very sick man, Tracy vowed he would eschew all things medical and surgical while abroad, but he could not shake off easily the habits of 25 years standing and was not many days in England before he was in touch with his surgical hero, Mr Spencer Wells in London, and with Lawson Tait in Birmingham. He was delighted to be received with kindness and hospitality by such leading British surgeons, and he wrote two splendid letters back to the "Australian Medical Journal" vividly describing his experience.

Later in this year Tracy attended the B.M.A. Meeting in London and represented the Australian Medical profession at the Lord Paget Mayor’s Banquet; though by now his unsuspected malignancy was manifesting itself only too cruelly in decreasing strength and increasing pain, this brave man contrived to attend every meeting in which he might learn something about the diseases of women. He listened to the silver tongued orator Sir James and the sonorous W.E. Gladstone, and struggled to garden parties and other functions to meet British, American and Continental leaders. After a year abroad he returned to Melbourne, wasted and wretchedly ill, to die seven months later, on 7th November 1874, at his house in Collins Street East.

Tracy must be regarded as the successful pioneer in Australia of ovariotomy, a most formidable undertaking in his pre Listerian era and one regarded with great awe by the general public and the profession alike; ovariotomists had been widely stigmatised as "belly rippers". Tracy’s first case was done in Melbourne in March 1864 at the patient’s private residence under chloroform anaesthesia. The operation was quite successful. This first of Tracy’s cases was actually the third ovariotomy performed in Australia. The operation had been successfully carried out twelve years previously in 1852 by Charles Mayo of Adelaide, and the next case attempted (unsuccessfully) was by Dr. Edward Barker of the Melbourne Hospital in 1859. Tracy operated altogether on 22 such cases in ten years, with four deaths. When one compares this death rate of 18% with that of 25% during the same period of the great Spencer Wells, it can be appreciated what impetus and encouragement Tracy’s success must have given to Australian surgeons in undertaking the operation. He never refused to operate in any case he encountered, and so high was his repute that only once was he met with a refusal to submit to operation.

Tracy was the first in Australia to use chloroform in the treatment of eclampsia.

The cause of Tracy’s fatal and exceedingly painful illness, which extended over three years, remained obscure until his death. For long it was considered a nervous dyspepsia caused by overwork, but it proved, by autopsy, to be an abdominal malignancy. At his special request, a history of the illness and the subsequent post mortem findings were published in full detail in the Australian Medical Journal of December 1874. No similar request for publication in Australian medical literature can be found. It was certainly most unusual, but it proved an example of Tracy’s earnestness in the advancement of medical knowledge.

His obsequies were of the simplest kind, carried out in accordance with his own instructions, and they provide an interesting commentary on the funeral practices of 80 years ago. "I wish", he wrote, "any public notice to contain merely the date, hour and destination. I desire that no refreshments of any kind shall be provided for those who attend my funeral, nor any distribution of scarfs, gloves or other such emblems of mourning. The hearse to be perfectly plain, no plumes or glass sides and drawn by only two horses. No attendants with plumes or feathers. Only as many plain mourning coaches as are necessary to convey the pall bearers and chief mourners and no other carriages are to be allowed to accompany the hearse within the gates of the cemetery. I will give the names of the eight pall bearers, and the chief mourners will be those of my sons-in-law who may be in Melbourne and their immediate relatives".

Nevertheless the procession that followed him to the grave was one of the longest ever seen in Melbourne. Sixty members of the medical profession walked in front of the hearse, and the streets all along the line of the route from his house to the cemetery, were crowded with spectators. His place on the staff of the Hospital was taken by Dr. Joseph Black.

Tracy had no sons, but six daughters have many descendants living in Australia. His eldest daughter, Mrs. Charles D’Ebro, served on the Committee of Management for many years.

Archival/Heritage Resources

Royal Women's Hospital Archives

  • Book of Remembrance, 1956 - 1975; Royal Women's Hospital Archives [ Details... ].

Published Resources

Journal Articles

  • Forster, Frank M C, 'Richard Thomas Tracy and His part in the History of Ovariotomy', The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, vol. 4, no. 3, 1964, pp. 128-138. [ Details... ]

Images

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Tracy's oviarotomy instruments
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Tracy, Richard Thomas
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Tracy's house
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Prepared by: Robyn Waymouth

Created: 28 July 2006, Last modified: 26 November 2006