biographies

Macdonald, Colin Ferguson (1895 - 1969)

Born
20 May 1895
Toorak, Victoria, Australia
Died
10 January 1969
Box Hill, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Medical Practitioner and Radiologist

Details

Transcription of an obituary by Mr Robert S. Lawson, and memoirs by Dr Keith Hallam and Dr J W Johnstone appeared in the "Medical Journal of Australia", 19th April 1969 and in the Book of Rembrance, Royal Women's Hospital, 1969.


COLIN FERGUSON MACDONALD
(1927 - 1963)

Dr. Colin Macdonald died in the Box Hill Hospital, Melbourne, on Friday, January 10th, 1969. He had just completed an afternoon’s work of reviewing X-ray films at this hospital, and was found slumped over the wheel of his car as he was about to drive home. It was in character that he should die on the job, "with his boots on", rebelling against more prudent advice. He knew well enough what a slender thread preserved him over his last months, but determined to put it to the test. He had always had a flair for the dramatic; he had always worn his panache; and so he played the last scene defiantly.

Colin Ferguson Macdonald was born at Toorak on May 20, 1895. This was just after the land boom had broken, and his thrifty Scottish parents (of whom he was very proud) sent him to the Camberwell state School No. 888. However, a Junior Government Scholarship - one of only 20 for the whole State of Victoria in those days - enabled him to attend Scotch College. By dint of hard work and natural ability, he acquired in turn Senior Government and University Scholarships, which allowed him to go up to Ormond College at the University of Melbourne. He became chairman of the Students’ Club of Ormond; and his loyal devotion to his old school and to his old University College coloured the rest of his life. He became a member of the council of each of these Colleges and president of their old boys’ associations. In the same way he became greatly attached to his own University. He was president of the Union, and for 23 years a member of the Standing Committee of Convocation, representing the graduates in medicine. The tribute paid to him by this body on his retirement in 1966 bears quoting. In part it reads: "His contributions to work of the Committee have never been merely confined to medical items." After referring to the "forthright truth so often enumerated, and the kindly wisdom so highly exemplified ..." It concludes that: "He has been a true University man with a multitude of intellectual and human interests." Dr Macdonald had graduated M.B., B.S. in 1918. As a medical student he was debarred from joining the A.I.F. until after graduation, so that he missed the experience of serving in war - a matter to him of life-long regret.

There followed a period of three years as resident medical officer at the Melbourne Hospital, the Children’s Hospital, and the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital (where he became a great friend and admirer of Dr. Frank Scholes, then Medical Superintendent). Thereafter he entered private practice in Warracknabeal, an important town in the Wimmera district of Victoria. However, the lack of X-ray and pathological services at that time frustrated him, and he determined to master more precise methods of diagnosis. He proceeded to England and acquired in 1925 the Cambridge Diploma of Medical Radiology and Electrology, the only post-graduate diploma in radiology then current. This led to a position at King’s College Hospital, where he was assistant radiologist to Dr Robert Knox, one of the early British pioneers in this specialty. Here he also encountered Dr Frederick Still and Dr Thomas Barlow, though only briefly. Nevertheless, they mad a profound impression, which he recalled in a memorable Röntgen Oration in Melbourne (1958).

After completing his assignment at King’s College Hospital, Dr Macdonald returned to Melbourne, where he became assistant in turn to Sir Stanley Argyle and Dr Herbert Hewlett, each of whom had been among the pioneers of radiology in this city. Later he became a member of the newly-formed Melbourne Radiological Clinic, with which group he served for the rest of his working life, becoming senior member and principal before his retirement.

At this time, also, he became Honorary Radiologist at the Children’s Hospital, which position he held for 20 years. This allegiance led on to his becoming President of the Melbourne Paediatric Society (later the Paediatric Society of Victoria). In 1938 he became a foundation Fellow of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians, and also a Fellow of the Faculty of Radiologists of London.

He became the first radiologist at the Women’s Hospital in 1927, and this also began a life-long attachment, in which he became Director of Radiology (1955-1963). His devotion and loyalty to the (now) Royal Women’s Hospital were so less than to his old school and college.

Among a group of students in residence in 1930, he was identified as the "man with the voice". Although attendance in the X-ray department was at that time no part of the obstetrics students’ training, we spent many sessions there, fascinated not so much by the X-rays as by the mellifluous speaker, with a range and resonance of voice we had not heard before. Indeed, we were rather proud of having "discovered" him, but doubtless many others claimed this also that is, before he became a celebrated speaker needing no discovery. In after years many audiences, often of many hundreds of people, were equally fascinated by his magnificent speaking voice and by his enthusiasm, his passion for detail, his gusto and his superb aplomb.

His published contributions on radiology alone would have established him as an important figure in his own specialty. But he was to the medical profession and the public at large even more renowned as an historian, an orator and an after-dinner speaker. To hosts of friends in clubs, schools, colleges and hospitals he was known as an enthusiast on innumerable topics - scholastic and sporting, literary and intellectual, agrarian and biographical, especially as an authority on the early settlers of Victoria. Above all, they knew him as a "social, friendly, honest man", who endeavoured to live his life in accordance with the Christian ethic.

To his wife, Margaret, and to his two sons, Colin and Kenneth, we extend our deepest sympathy.

DR KEITH HALLAM wrote: Half a century ago, Colin Macdonald was the outstanding senior student in Ormond College, University of Melbourne. He was unique; he did not imitate or simulate any other man; he was inimitable. He had great innate gifts, which he polished and perfected so that he became an eminent teacher, lecturer and orator. In the 1920’s he was one of three Cambridge Diplomates in Medical Radiology and Electrology. This trio, of Dr. Barbara Wood, Dr Colin Macdonald and Dr John O’Sullivan, advanced radiology in Victoria in the ensuing years.

Colin Macdonald was deeply interested in education. He was a prominent member of the body of extramural counsellors who, through their wide experience, and their wise advice and decisions, aid the progress of secondary and tertiary education. As a teacher and lecturer in medical profession, he endeared himself to younger practitioners, because he instructed them and befriended them in personal discourse. A young radiologist, sitting next to me at a lecture which Dr Macdonald delivered at the Australasian Medical congress (B.M.A.) in Perth in 1948, said at the end of the session; "I dearly wish that I could come to Melbourne and sit at the feet of that man for two or three months." Recently a leading member of that band of brilliant young radiologists who adorn the profession in Melbourne said after the first lecture by Dr Macdonald that he had attended, that he had found a man to admire and respect for his teaching ability and his willingness to discuss pertinent aspects of the subject of the evening. This urge to became an acolyte of Colin Macdonald was prevalent.

At the meetings of the Melbourne Paediatric Society at the old Children’s Hospital in Carlton he was probably at this best. When I say that he was idolized there, I believe I am not exaggerating. He felt perfectly at home in the cosy, intimate atmosphere, where his audience was "with him" both physically because of the cramped quarters (where the speaker was almost among the audience), and because they were in intellectual accord. He did not resent this adulation; and it was Bernard Shaw who replied, when asked his reaction to favourable reviews of his work: "Like any other lion, I purr when I am stroked." Colin brought at times a light touch to the meetings when he applied amusing and detrimental fictional anecdotes to his dearest friends, who joined in the hilarious reception of the baiting.

As an orator he was superb. His oratory was tinctured with rhetoric, but not too much; just enough to add a flavour. Always his papers and his orations were prepared with a meticulous care that paid a tribute to his audiences, who returned homage to him. Memorable ones were his Röntgen Oration in Melbourne in 1958, which he gave at very short notice, and his "Röntgen’s Discovery and the Pioneer Melbourne Radiologists" at the Monash Theatre of the Alfred Hospital in 1966. The former detailed the lives and work of Sir Thomas Barlow and Sir Frederick Still. Others included memorial orations commemorating Dr. Arthur Wilson (obstetrician), Dr Henry Douglas Stephens (paediatrician) and Dame Nellie Melba.

Medical publications came at relatively frequent intervals after his return from Cambridge. The first of these papers was in 1926. The subject was "Osteochondritis". He held that its aetiology was obscure and its manifestations and sites were protean. Amongst its vaunted causes were non-specific infections, bone dystrophies, rickets and congenital abnormalities, tuberculosis, syphilis and vitamin deficiencies. Trauma was postulated, and the similarity of the X-ray appearances of Perthes’ disease to those subsequent to the forceful reduction of congenital dislocation of the hip joint was noted. In those days the concept that osteochondritis followed trauma was new and a real breakthrough. Colin’s wide reading kept him well informed, so that he was in the van to endow his lectures with important news for his audiences.

In 1927 he published a paper on "Principles Underlying Treatment by Radium" (in gynaecological practice). Because of the varying techniques used, Dr Macdonald stated that "the last word has not been said on this interesting subject". In the same year, a paper on "The X-ray Diagnosis of Foreign Bodies in the Air Passages and the Oesophagus" was an epitome of the classic work of Chevalier Jackson of Philadelphia, "the doyen of endoscopists". Colin Macdonald had, in addition to his own inventive and original mind, a remarkable flair for presenting the results of the work of his teachers in an interesting and didactic manner, so that one gained an education through this efficient channel. This is a rare gift. Pastiche can be so tasteless unless dished up by a real master!

In 1932, his introductory remarks to a paper on "Some Aspects of Obstetrical Radiography" were a paradigm of Colin Macdonald’s superb adeptness in presenting, in a fluent and witty manner, a very well known and hackneyed early aspect of X-rays. They are worth quoting now:

Extraordinary, sinister qualities were immediately credited to the X-rays, and the belief that evilly disposed persons could carry X-rays about with them and betray in broad daylight the secrets underlying lingerie gave grave concern to the sterner-minded members of the civilized communities. In February, 1896, Congressman Read introduced a bill into the New Jersey Legislature, prohibiting the use of X-ray opera glasses, and this bill provided for substantial penalties for those who, all unsuspected by the ladies of the chorus, would penetrate the thin veils of theatrical modesty. An echo of such feelings was heard on the other side of the Atlantic when a London firm preyed on a gullible public by advertising 'X-ray proof under-clothing'. But it was not long before the fond hopes of the Don Juans of 1896 were cruelly dashed to the ground and they, like many good men after them, were brought to realize the limitations of X-rays."

He read a paper on X-ray interpretation of pulmonary tuberculosis in children at the Sixth Session of the Australasian Medical Congress, wherein he emphasized the lack of characteristic X-ray signs in this disease. He said that radiologists must give opinions only. How true this was! We were prone to make diagnosis of pulmonary lesions.

Pelvimetry was his subject at the Eighth Session of Congress. Here is an example of his felicity of expression: "They (obstetricians) contend that they do not want their fingers or their obstetrical judgement confused by unnecessary mathematics."

One of his most memorable lectures was on fibrocystic disease in children, about 20 years ago, in which he brought fresh news of the radiological features of this involved disease. He seemed in many ways to be a radiological obstetrician by bringing to light many new concepts.

As an historian of the Australian scene and development, he was famous and sought after as a lecturer. The Wye River Settlement, Coranderrk Aboriginal Station, and Sir Francis Ormond, Sir John MacFarland of Ormond College fame, the Doctors Fetherston and many other Women’s Hospital personalities featured in his addresses.

The death of Princess Charlotte and the mistaken diagnosis of pregnancy concerning Lady Flora Hastings were dealt with in papers published in the Journal in 1935 and 1941. He doted on the Georgian and Victorian eras, and I remember his almost ecstatic appreciation of Lytton Strachey’s and Phillip Guedalla’s original presentations of the lives of the eminent and not so eminent, in the reigns of the sovereigns of the nineteenth century. His importance as an historian led to him being made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Victoria in 1960.

His interest in people he met under many different circumstances imbued him with a sense of current social history, for he was fascinated by how people lived and their environment. One young receptionist in a hospital X-ray department told me: "He made me feel important when he asked my about myself, but in no way did he give the impression of prying." In social gatherings he was always the centre of happy, laughing and talking groups. He was a catalyst who generated gregariousness and jollity.

Colin Macdonald has passed on, but much remains to commemorate a splendid mind and intellect, and to demonstrate his abiding interest in man and women. A lasting memorial will be the motto of the College of Radiologists of Australasia, which he devised in 1964: "Lumen afferimus morbis (hominum).

DR. J.W. JOHNSTONE wrote: The passing of Dr Colin Macdonald is a loss to all, and particularly to his many friends at the Royal Women’s Hospital. His service to the hospital covered a period of 37 years, from the time when he was appointed first Radiologist in 1927, which then included radiotherapy and radium therapy, until he retired as Director in 1963. From humble beginnings he developed an extensive department, and his advice was taken in design of the new unit in the recently completed hospital, although he did not quite live to see it in operation. His experience in paediatric radiology at the Children’s Hospital, and the wealth of cases at the Women’s Hospital, put his in the foremost rank. He made valuable contributions to obstetric radiology, particularly in disproportion and pelvimetry, of which he reported 1,000 cases with follow-up analysis, and with the help of B. Milne Sutherland on the clinical side he pioneered the procedure of the hystero-salpingogram. He delighted to put up the films and enter into animated discussion with those interested. Realizing that his work was with shadows, he liked to hang the flesh on them.

Early practice at Warracknabeal, which he jokingly referred to as his experiences on the banks of the Yarriambiac Creek, gave him an abiding interest in and understanding of the problems of the general practitioner. He was gifted with an outstanding, almost encyclopaedic memory, particularly for persons and pedigrees, and he took care in the accuracy of historical detail and in the use of the written and spoken word. Because of these attributes, and his long association with the development and personalities of the Hospital over one-third of its history, he was invited by the members of the honorary medical staff, with the support of the Board of Management, to make a documentary in the form of "A Book of Remembrance". This was compiled for the celebration in 1956 of the hospital Centenary. The book is kept in Archives, with a duplicate available by request in the Marshall Allan Library. It is a biography of all the deceased members of the honorary medical staff up to that time, each with a photograph.

An obituary, "as through a glass darkly", reveals facets of the writer himself; so this book is a remarkable tribute to the qualities of Colin Ferguson Macdonald. Not engraved in stone, but inscribed in written English, it is an enduring monument in the Hospital to the man. After completion of the volume covering the first century, he undertook to continue the work, and so incite succeeding generations to expand the volume. On his retirement from the active staff, the special position of Honorary Historian was created for him, now carried on by his successors. In the Centenary Year 1956, he delivered the Fetherston Memorial Lecture in Wilson Hall on "The Early History of the Royal Women’s Hospital", and spoke also to the Section of Medical History of the Victorian Branch of the B.M.A. on the medical founders of the Hospital, Dr John Maund and Dr Richard Tracy. He gave the Seventh Arthur Wilson Memorial Oration in 1961, and the last oration of his life was the Fourth Tracy and Maund Memorial Lecture delivered in 1967.

Colin had a love for ceremonial, tradition, ancestral achievements and all things which had continuance. His praise of and admiration for the British people and their achievements was unbounded, particularly for the Scots - a facet of character which he "wore on his sleeve". Amongst the many fields in which he achieved distinction, we always felt that his relationship with the Royal Women’s Hospital occupied a special place near his heart. Perhaps it was this fact which led his son Colin, after following his father in the tradition of medicine, to develop his special interest in obstetrics and gynaecology. The Hospital was close to his university, and although he later chose to live in Hawthorn near Scotch College, I have heard him say that a desirable place to live was across the campus on Royal Parade, Parkville, within sight of the tower of Ormond College.

Being a centre for training of all graduates in medicine in Victoria, and for those aspiring to postgraduate degrees in the specialty, the Hospital was the cross-roads of personalities. The compact dining-room was the focal point, and gave that intimacy which revealed the conversationalist at his best. Many will remember Colin as he entered, neatly but loosely attired in conservative grey, tall, later with the slight student stoop, angular, with loose limbs which he coordinate to the spoken word. On first impression, his prominent facial features might make him appear a little dour to strangers; but then his eyes could twinkle and his fact light up with a ready smile as he recognized, perhaps, a new resident, or extended his hand to some visitor. A flow of greetings and hearty laughter would follow, and we would be astounded as he inquired about the health and doings of the family and the ancestral connections.

Conversation passed, not only across the board, but around the room - the revolution of surgery and conquest of sepsis, anaesthesia and transfusion, literature and art, release of atomic energy, the fall of megalomaniacs and doings of tyrants, Britain at war and the rise of statesmen, the conquest of space, the pill, and the theological revolution. No wonder conversation was lively, and on occasion crutches were shouldered to show how fields were won; indeed stirring times, and we have all felt the better for having lived through them with Colin. After such sharpening of the wit, it was customary to walk down the covered ways to the door, the progress being punctuated by sudden halts, as Colin drew himself up to make a point, or, as we knew in later years, to avert the pangs of his impending disability.

It was likewise a pleasant experience to drive with him in the countryside, along the spread of the great pastoral properties down the Princes Highway from Footscray to Warrnambool, where he might revive boyhood memories of days spent with his friend, Dr Dick Saltau. Sometimes it might be to a medical meeting, or to an historical meeting at Echuca, or again to follow the byway tracks of McMillian, McDonald or Strzelecki through the green hills of Gippsland.

Colin was not by physique or inclination a practical farmer with any desire for dirt on the hands, but he had a love of nature, and that feel of the soil which has been inherent in us since Adam became a husbandman and planted the vineyard. Through his wife, Margaret, he had family roots in the soil, and he gave full credit to her for her wide knowledge of agriculture and husbandry. As his son Colin Ferguson followed his father’s footsteps, so his older son Kenneth followed his mother’s tradition and became a successful farmer at Whittlesea. Latterly outings were mainly restricted to visiting Kenneth and the grandchildren at this delightful family property. There he could sit on the northern terrace and view the expanse of the holding through the spaced red gums under rolling Australian skies.

It is a pleasure to have shared life to the full with a man of integrity, kindness and distinguished learning; one who could uphold the Christian morality in a changing world. As Thucydides recorded of Pericles in the funeral oration at the height of a former culture: "The whole earth is the tomb of heroic men, and their story is not only engraved in stone over their graves, but abides everywhere without visible symbol woven into the stuff of other men’s lives."

Bibliography

The following papers and articles by the late Dr Colin Macdonald were published in THE MEDICAL JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIA:

"The Radiological Aspects of Certain Forms of Osteochondritis", 1926, 1: 423.

"Principles Underlying Treatment by Radium", 1927, 1: 398.

"The X-ray Diagnosis of Foreign Bodies in the Air Passages and the Oesophagus", 1927, 2: 319.

"Some Aspects of Obstetrical Radiography", 1932, 1: 398.

"The Case of Lady Flora Hastings", 1935, 1: 241.

"The Case of Princess Charlotte", 1941, 1: 38.

"Hysterosalpingography in Sterility", 1945, 1: 142.

"X-ray Interpretation of Pulmonary Tuberculosis in Children", 1949, 1: 200.

"One Thousand Complete Pelvimetries: A Radiological and Obstetrical Analysis", 1953, 1: 357.

"The Fetherstons and Their Colleagues: Early History of the Royal Women’s Hospital Melbourne" (the R.H. Fetherston Memorial Lecture), 1957, 1: 25.

"The Intravenous Pyelogram after Radical Hysterectomy and Radiotherapy", 1958, 1: 894.

"The Life of Sir Thomas Fitzgerald", 1966, 2: 95.

Dr Macdonald also contributed a large number of obituary notices which were published in THE MEDICAL JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIA over the last 20 years. Other contributions on radiology comprised:

"A Rare Cause of Intracranial Calcification: Tuberous Sclerosis", Brit. J. Radiol., 1935, 8: 697.

"Some reminiscences of Thomas Barlow and Frederick Still", J. Coll. Radiol. Aust., 1961, 5: 88.

The chapter on"Radiology in Obstetrics" in Professor Lance Townsend’s Text Book of Obstetrics", 1st Edition, 1964, Melbourne Univ. Press.

Dr Macdonald published a number of papers in the Victorian historical magazine, Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, many of which had a medical interest. The following is the complete list of these contributions:

"The History of the Wye River Settlement", 1935, Vol. 15, December.

"Francis Ormond: University Benefactor", 1941, Vol. 19, December.

"Early Letters of Sir John MacFarland - One Time Chancellor of the University of Melbourne", 1954, Vol. 25, June.

"The Residential Component of University Education" (Seventh Arthur Wilson Memorial Oration delivered at the University of Melbourne to the Congress of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists), 1961, Vol. 31, February.

"Dame Nellie Melba Centenary Oration", 1961, Vol. 31, February.

"Henry Douglas Stephens Memorial Oration", 1962, Vol. 33, August.

"Memories of Coranderrk Aboriginal Mission Station", 1964, Vol. 35, August.

"Röentgen’s Discovery and the Pioneer Melbourne Radiologists", 1965, Vol. 36, November.

"The Late Emeritus Professor William Alexander Osborne - An appreciation", 1967, Vol. 38, December.

The Tracy Memorial Lecture at the Royal Women’s Hospital on "The Development of Obstetrical and Gynaecological Radiology", is as yet unpublished.

Contributions to the "Australian Dictionary of Biography" on Thomas Fitzgerald, Walter Balls Headley and Alexander Cameron MacDonald are awaiting publication.

Finally, Dr Macdonald compiled biographies of the medical staff of the Royal Woman’s Hospital, Melbourne, and its predecessors, under the title of "A Book of Remembrance". The first volume appeared in 1956 at the time of the Hospital Centenary, and subsequent entries have kept it up to date as a continuing record since that time. [Subsequent entries appear in Volume II]

Archival/Heritage Resources

Royal Women's Hospital Archives

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

Prepared by: Robyn Waymouth

Created: 27 September 2006, Last modified: 26 November 2006