David Murray Morton: Father figure of surgery at St Vincent's Hospital, bush lawyer and thwarted reformer of the medico-legal system

When the first Golden Age of surgery at St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne (a period covering the first 25 years of the twentieth century) is discussed, the names that spring to mind are usually those of Sir Thomas Dunhill, Sir Hugh Devine, Sir Douglas Shields and Julian Smith. A name which is often overlooked, and by now almost forgotten, is that of David Murray Morton. Murray ­Morton's career both as a medical student, general practitioner, anaesthetist and surgeon coincided with a revolution in the practice of medicine. He witnessed the progression from Listerian antisepsis to asepsis in surgical practice, the improvements in anaesthesia, the introduction of antibiotics and, before he died in 1959, the beginnings of organ transplants and open heart surgery. Morton was fond of saying that he grew up with the hospital. From the time of his first appointment as an anaesthetist in l896 to the time of his retirement from St Vincent's as senior surgeon in 1931, Morton, admired by all as a highly competent surgeon and a man of incorruptible probity, can rightly be described as the father figure of surgery during the formative years of St Vincent's Hospital. His innate sense of justice and fair play formed the basis of his distinguished tenure of the Presidency of the Medical Defence Association of Victoria, where his constructive attempts at reform of the medico-legal system were only thwarted by the predictable opposition of the legal profession and politicians.