biographies

Forster, Frank Menzies Cameron (1923 - 1995)

MB BS FRCOG FRACOG

Born
21 September 1923
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Died
18 March 1995
East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Gynaecologist, Medical Practitioner, Obstetrician and Professorial Staff
Summary

Compiled by Ann Westmore PhD


Frank Menzies Cameron Forster was expert in managing pregnancy complicated by conditions such as severe liver disease, post-polio syndrome and cervical incompetence. He was also much sought-after for his knowledge and experience in the management of labour and forceps delivery.

He was a senior member of the University of Melbourne Professorial Unit at the Royal Women’s Hospital 1953-59 where he taught medical students, postgraduate trainees and young specialists in his field. He served as an honorary obstetrician to the hospital 1959-65, after which he continued an informal association with it through his medical colleagues.

A passionate collector and writer, he was a founding father of medical history societies in Victoria and Australia, and was one of the first to document the history of obstetrics and gynaecology in the Antipodes.

Details

Frank Forster, born 21 September 1923 in Sydney, was the middle child and second son of Cameron McDougall Forster, a medical practitioner, and of Jean Catherine Officer, a remedial teacher.

His parents met at the University of Melbourne while both were students. They married in Melbourne in 1919 before moving to Sydney where his father resumed his medical studies at the University of Sydney, graduating in 1926. Showing the resourcefulness that characterised her later life, Forster’s mother supported the couple in various ways including needlepoint work while her husband pursued his studies.

Childhood and adolescence
Forster’s early education was at Ashfield Grammar School, his father having been appointed Medical Superintendent of the Renwick Infants Hospital at Summer Hill. At age eleven, his parents separated and his mother returned to Melbourne accompanied by Forster and his siblings so that they could be close to her family. Forster felt the emotional dislocation keenly even though his father also returned to Melbourne (after travelling to the UK) where he worked as a general practitioner.

Times were not easy for the family from a financial viewpoint, necessitating Mrs Forster’s return to work. She already had a Bachelor of Arts degree having graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1918, majoring in psychology. She gained employment at the ground-breaking remedial clinic established by psychiatrist, Dr John Williams, at the Children’s Hospital. Her ability to teach handicapped and backward children and the moral support she provided to families through her home visits was recognised by paediatricians such as Dr Elizabeth Turner of the Queen Victoria Hospital who referred patients to her.

Just as his mother faced major challenges in getting her life back on track, so did Forster. In his first year after returning to Melbourne, he attended the Princes Hill State School, near to where the family lived. An incident in which another pupil injured Forster’s eye with a stick suggested a tough environment and no doubt contributed to his mother’s belief that a move to a less confronting setting was desirable. She impressed on him the need to gain a scholarship, which he did, thereby enabling him to complete his education at Melbourne Grammar School (1934-39).

He performed well in classics and history and seemed set to follow in the footsteps of his mother’s older brother, Sir Keith Officer, a pioneer Australian diplomat. His mother supported his studiousness and competitive urge, expressing satisfaction with any efforts that placed him in one of the top two positions in a subject or class. For reasons that may have included advice from family members, he did not pursue tertiary training in Arts subjects, as anticipated, but instead embarked on medical training at the University of Melbourne.

A colleague at both school and university, Dr Bryan Gandevia, captured something of Forster’s mercurial and theatrical temperament when he described him as “a very complex individual … capable of being a brilliant actor … he could be reserved and remote … [or] great company and had a rather wicked sense of humour”. Although Forster never took part in formal theatrical performances, in the years to come he made the most of his sense of theatre and timing.

Unavoidable challenges
In 1940 he entered University but found the intricacies of physics and chemistry difficult to master. After failing first year medicine, his life was thrown into turmoil by the discovery of a tumour on his spine. It was benign, but doctors initially thought it inoperable. With Forster facing paraplegia, Royal Melbourne Hospital orthopaedic surgeon Dr Eric Price declared his willingness to perform surgery. The operation was a success, although the spine was forever weakened. Price told Forster he had given him back his life until he was 70, but beyond that he could make no predictions. Gandevia, who visited Forster during the long months of recuperation, recalled that his friend did a lot of thinking and reading as he lay on his back.

Having pulled through the surgery, Forster withdrew from his medical course and found a job with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR – predecessor of the CSIRO). According to Professor Roger Pepperell from the Royal Women’s Hospital, Forster may have been lost to medicine but for the persuasive powers of the Dean of Medicine, Professor Roy Wright, who recognised the young man’s potential and persuaded him to resume his studies. Forster rewarded Wright’s belief in him, graduating with honours in surgery, as well as obstetrics and gynaecology, in 1948.

While working as a resident medical officer and registrar at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1949 and 1950, Forster started his surgical training. He also met his future wife, trainee nurse Prue Edgar, at the hospital ball. He then spent a year as a resident at the Women’s Hospital, where he gained considerable experience working with senior obstetrician, Dr Margaret Alison Mackie. Later that year (1951) an interest in pathology led to his appointment as Assistant to the Head of the hospital’s Pathology Department, Dr Hans Bettinger.

In 1952 he married Prue, and they had three sons and a daughter. Over the years, she concluded that the challenges he faced as a young man, and particularly his spinal problems, caused him to become more driven:
He’d always been a “happy Jack” until then, but those experiences led to him becoming more single-minded and determined to make the most of every opportunity. He often said to me that it was never the brilliant person who came out on top, but the hard worker. He was impeccable at dotting the “i’s” and crossing the “t’s” and he made sure that everything was done to a high standard. As a young man he was also very competitive. Because of that, he did not make a great many friends at school though, later, he greatly enjoyed the company of his medical colleagues.
His attention to detail suited the specialty of pathology, and found favour with Bettinger, a man of broad interests, including a love of good music “with the gift of pitch memory”. It was he who introduced Forster to classical music, which became one of his passions.

Forster extended his training in 1953 by travelling overseas to the Hospital for Women in Soho Square, London. While working in this capacity he successfully studied for his Membership of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (MRCOG, which he later converted into a FRCOG).

Cementing a reputation
Returning to the Women’s Hospital from London, Forster had to choose between pathology and clinical obstetrics. He chose the latter but retained his interest in pathology throughout his clinical career. According to Prue Forster, he was quite sceptical about pathology results and, while working in private practice, sometimes had two pathologists examine tissue from the same patient as a safeguard.

In 1954 he was appointed Second Assistant in the Professorial Unit of the Women’s Hospital under Professor Lance Townsend and, in 1957, First Assistant. When Townsend went overseas on a fellowship in 1955, Forster took charge of the teaching of resident staff and medical students, a role he enjoyed immensely and for which he gained an enviable reputation. According to Prue Forster, lecturing was an outlet for his sense of the dramatic, his training in classics and for his sense of humour. “He went to a lot of trouble to make his lectures memorable and, on one occasion, persuaded me to dress in costume during a medical history lecture at Werribee Park,” she recalled.

He worked long hours and experienced intermittent back pain. When not teaching, he could be seen striding slowly but determinedly through the wards of the Women’s Hospital or to the operating theatre, thereby making a virtue of necessity. He was heard to comment that it was better if “obstetricians don’t run; by the time you get there, things have quite often sorted themselves out”.

In the meantime, starting in 1956, he became an honorary Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital at the urging of his close friend, Dr John Forbes, another 1948 graduate and best man at his wedding. Forbes, who was Medical Superintendent at Fairfield 1961-78, wanted the position filled by someone expert in overseeing the complications that could occur when women with polio and other infectious diseases such as hepatitis, became pregnant and gave birth.

Forster was just the man for the job, and continued in the position until he retired from medical practice in 1984. His successor, Professor Pepperell, said Forster was well liked and respected at Fairfield and his experience was second to none. “He was probably the world expert on liver disease in pregnancy during the 1960s and had certainly managed more patients with this condition than anyone else in this country.” Forster was also honorary obstetrician and gynaecologist at Fairlea Women’s Prison for some years and taught nursing staff at the Presbyterian Babies Home in Canterbury.

His relations with the University Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology went through difficult times in 1958 when he fell out with Professor Townsend. Although he left the University Department at this time with regret, he continued working at the Royal Women’s Hospital as an Associate Obstetrician and Gynaecologist. The following year he was appointed Honorary Obstetrician to Outpatients at the hospital, continuing in the position until 1965. He refined a procedure originally developed to overcome cervical incompetence which involved designing a special instrument for inserting a suture into the cervix. Known as the ‘Frank Forster needle’, it gained widespread acclaim for extending pregnancies at risk of coming to a premature conclusion. At a time when many of the life-saving techniques to assist premature babies now taken for granted were unknown, his instrument helped save the lives of many infants.

Dr Colin Officer, a cousin who trained in medicine at the University of Melbourne, starting in 1954, said that Townsend gave the lectures but Forster taught at the bedsides;
He taught meticulous care of the pregnant woman . . . Don’t assume anything; exclude the life-threatening conditions . . . He taught me the art of forceps application. Gentleness, regional anaesthesia, ‘pull as the pain would push’. Similarly, Forster gave instruction about the art of assisted breech delivery; ‘Deliver too fast and a cerebral haemorrhage was the risk; deliver too slowly and respiratory complications occurred.’

According to Officer, Forster taught so well that when appointed Honorary Obstetrician in 1959, these same students referred him huge numbers of private patients. The enormous workload forced him to give up his honorary work during 1965 for the sake of his family.

New fields and broader horizons
His departure from the University Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology seemed to trigger the pursuit of other interests. He briefly established private consulting rooms in Collins St. next to Gandevia, who was by then specialising in respiratory medicine. The pair started to systematically collect historical books, instruments and ephemera in their respective fields and, according to Gandevia, ‘unlike a lot of collectors of books and other items, our collaboration was amicable and we enjoyed it greatly’. He also commented that Forster was ‘thorough and meticulous’ in his collecting. The pair instituted the archives of the Australian Medical Association, working closely with archivist, Ann Tovell.

When Gandevia moved to Sydney in the late 1960s, Forster relocated to Victoria Pde, East Melbourne, next to another good friend, neonatal paediatrician, Dr Glyn White. The arrangement was personally and professionally rewarding; Forster saw many of White’s patients who had Rhesus incompatibility problems complicating their pregnancies and White followed the progress of children whose mothers Forster attended. A nephew, Hugh Forster, was impressed by the strength of his uncle’s relationship with his patients, many of whom later remarked on “their admiration for the man and their unquestioned trust in his medical acumen”.

In subsequent years, Forster and White jointly purchased the former British Medical Association building in nearby Lansdowne St., occupying rooms on opposite sides of a corridor on the ground floor. They used the top floor to run antenatal and postnatal classes and encouraged physiotherapists to develop exercise programs for pregnant women. The top floor also housed Forster’s formidable medical library, with works covering obstetrics and gynaecology, sexology, birth control, infertility, eugenics, mothercraft, the nursing profession, and the social problems of women. Prue Forster recalled that on one occasion, customs officials threatened to charge her husband with the import of obscene material until they were persuaded that it was legitimate, having a bearing on developments in obstetrics, birth control and natural childbirth.

One of many areas of medical history in which Forster showed great interest, was the history of the Royal Women’s Hospital. He is credited with jointly establishing with Dr J. W. (“Hoppy”) Johnstone the Tracy Memorial Lecture series (later the Tracy Maund Memorial Lectures, so named to honour the hospitals’ co-founders Drs Richard Tracy and John Maund). The lectures were timed to coincide with the annual course of postgraduate lectures arranged by a postgraduate sub-committee of the hospital staff.

In giving the inaugural lecture on 10 March 1964, Forster chose the subject, ‘Richard Thomas Tracy and His Part in the History of Ovariotomy’. His treatment of the subject was lively and entertaining while reflecting a high level of scholarship. It brought to mind Gandevia’s comment that Forster was a man who “understood the art and the science of history, of historical research, historiography and bibliography”. Forster’s approach to medical history was influenced by Dr Edward Ford, a leading figure in the field and head of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at the University of Sydney from the late 1930s, whom Gandevia had introduced to him.

Forster mentored some leading obstetricians, including Geoffrey Bishop, later Senior Vice-President of the Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RACOG), President of the Asia-Oceania Federation of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (AOFOG) and the Honorary Curator of the Historical Collection of RACOG and RANZCOG immediately after Forster. Bishop found him to be “honest, intelligent and forthright”, with a wry sense of humour and emphatic in his views. He had exacting standards, about which Bishop was left in no doubt after arriving late due to a misunderstanding to assist him in surgery for the first time. Forster did not speak to him until the procedure was over at which time he said sternly, “Never do that again!” The unbending side of Forster’s character was not reserved for junior colleagues: Friends and family also found him unforgiving if they did not meet his uncompromising standards.

His interest in medicine and its history led him on some interesting journeys.
For example, he took time out from his clinical work in 1978 and 1979 when, as Norman Haire Fellow at the University of Sydney, he researched the life and work of Haire, a controversial Australian gynaecologist who wrote extensively on birth control, sex education and sexual reform. Sadly, Forster’s plan to write a book on the history of birth control in Australia was thwarted by ill-health later in life.

Notwithstanding his health problems, he made major contributions to the history of Australian medicine, lecturing, writing numerous papers and as author or co-author of a number of books including “Progress in obstetrics and gynaecology in Australia” (1967) and “Super ardua: The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Australia 1929-1979” (1981).

He was also involved in the formation and/or leadership of a number of medical history interest groups, serving as President of the AMA (Victorian Branch) section of medical history 1966-67 and founding member of the Medical History Society of Victoria and of the Australian Society for the History of Medicine, of which he was Victorian president 1966-68 and 1980-82. He was also honorary curator of the RACOG historical collection for many years from 1982. The breadth of his interests was evident from his membership of the Medico-Legal Society of Victoria (President in 1982), and of the Book Collectors Society of Victoria (President, 1983-85).

In 1989, the year of his retirement, he seemed set to enter a new phase of achievement when he helped establish the Glyn White Research Fellowship of the RACOG to promote research in perinatal medicine. In 1990, the RACOG recognised his contributions to the art and science of obstetrics and gynaecology by presenting him with its highest award, The President’s Medal.

The final curtain
Around 1993, soon after reaching 70, Forster’s back gave way as his backbone collapsed. His state of health was further compromised by a heart condition which had previously contributed to two strokes. Some years previously, he and Prue had moved to East Melbourne, where many of his colleagues and friends visited him on their way to or from the College. Their continuing contact provided him with much pleasure during a difficult period.

He gave his medical library to the College and was delighted when it decided to name its new library after him. Tragically, but also perhaps in keeping with the theatrical aspects of his life, he sustained a fatal heart attack on the stairs to the library on 18 March 1995, less than an hour before it was due to be named in his honour and surrounded by family and friends.


Sources;

Personal communication Prue Forster, Geoffrey Bishop, Hugh Forster and Colin Officer to Ann Westmore;

Eulogies by Dr Bryan Gandevia, Dr Geoffrey Bishop and Professor Roger Pepperell;

Frank M.C. Forster, ‘Richard Thomas Tracy and His Part in the History of Ovariotomy’, “ANZJOG”, 1964, 4, 3, 128-138;

Bryan Gandevia and Harold Attwood, ‘Frank Menzies Cameron Forster 1923-1995; A Tribute’, “Medical History Australia”, August 1995, pp. 1-3;

Rosaline Winspear, ‘A College benefactor: Frank Forster – obstetrician, gynaecologist, medical historian and bibliophile’, “ANZJOG”, 2004, 44, 3-5;

‘Hans Frederick Bettinger’, “Roll of the RACP”, 1988, 1, p. 24.

Published Resources

Edited Books

  • McDonald, G.L. (ed.), Roll of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Sydney, 1988-1994. [ Details... ]

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... ]
  • Gandevia, Bryan and Harold Attwood, 'Frank Menzies Cameron Forster 1923-1995; A Tribute', Medical History Australia, August 1995, pp. pp. 1-3. [ Details... ]
  • Winspear, Rosaline, 'A College benefactor: Frank Forster – obstetrician, gynaecologist, medical historian and bibliophile', The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, vol. 44, 2004, pp. 3-5. [ Details... ]

Prepared by: Robyn Waymouth

Created: 15 November 2006