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THE SURGERY EXPLOSION: FROM SYME TO ETERNITY
Author(s) -
Wood Ian J.
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.1972.tb47421.x
Subject(s) - citation , fifteenth , eternity , medicine , library science , art , classics , computer science , literature
IT was a beautiful early spring morning in 1882, when three young doctors, George Syme, Richard Stawell and Jeffreys Wood, set off on their bicycles from the Melbourne Hospital to play tennis at "Rostella", the stately home in Lonsdale Street of their hero, Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, Surgeon to the Melbourne Hospital. When resting after a strenuous game, Stawell said to Sir Thomas: "Young Syme over there is a good tennis player, but he does not say very much." Sir Thomas replied: "Syme will go far in our profession he will be a very great man." (Wood, 1920, personal communication.) This was to be so. Indeed, after Syme's death 47 years later, Richard Stawell (1929) wrote: Syme valued leadership of course, but popularity made no appeal to him. We forced upon him high positions with their great responsibility, and, because he was strong In body and mind, and unselfish, he accepted these positions with all this extra work; and filled them worthily and with distinction. He was an interesting and delightful companion. At times he was somewhat inscrutable. This was Sir George Syme as I knew him. Although at times he was somewhat inscrutable, he and Lady Syme were delightful hosts to many of us who enjoyed the merriment and pleasures of the Syme family at 19 Collins Street and their cottage at Belgrave. Our George Syme was born in England, the son of George Alexander Syme, M.A., Aberdeen, a pillar of the Baptist Church in Nottinghamshire, England, whose wife was of a notable Quaker family ("Australian Encyclopeedla", 1963). When son George was four years old his father brought him and the family to Australia, and his father became a member of the staff of The Age newspaper, and later a most successful editor of the associated weekly newspaper, The Leader.