as chairman of the trauma committee of the American College of Surgeons (1959–1964) and the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, of which he became president in 1961.
Although technically he had not been trained as an orthopedic surgeon, his work in the areas of fractures and trauma was recognized by his election as an honorary fellow of the American Orthopedic Association. In 1964 he was presented with the Surgeon’s Award for Distinguished Service to Safety by the National Safety Council, which carried the following citation.
An expert surgeon respected by his colleagues, a teacher revered by his students, and a gentleman loved by all who knew him.
The management of shoulder problems was a major interest of Dr. McLaughlin and he wrote and lectured on the subject extensively.
McMurray’s clinical appointments at the David Lewis Northern Hospital, Royal Liverpool Children’s Hospital and Ministry of Pensions Hospital were coupled with university teaching appointments, first as lecturer and then, in suc- cession to Robert Jones, as director of orthopedic studies. When a chair was established in 1938, he became Liverpool’s first professor of orthopedics, and after upholding the traditions of Hugh Owen Thomas for a quarter of a century, he was made emeritus professor in 1948. He was honored by the presidencies of the British Orthopedic Asso- ciation and the Liverpool Medical Institution, and was president-elect of the British Medical Association.
He was essentially a good companion. Whether in the operating theater, where none was immune from his wit, on the golf links, where he sank ridiculously long putts without appearing to look at the ball, at home playing cards, where he always seemed to win, or at a fair throwing at coconuts and smashing a whole stand of crockery for an outlay of half a crown, he was great fun.
When doing nothing he did it thoroughly, and to see him sitting in the sun at his beloved Ystrad
“cottage,” gazing at the Denbighshire hills, was an education in relaxation. His kindness was warmed with an emotion that he himself would have denied. For 6 years after the loss of his first wife he was a very lonely man; but then the wound healed and after marrying again he enjoyed life more and more.
In McMurray was exemplified British reluc- tance to commit clinical observation to writing until confirmed after many years. His writings were therefore few, but they were important.
Some may still find difficulty in eliciting his sign for posterior horn tears of the meniscus, and others may wonder why oblique displacement osteotomy avails in the treatment of osteoarthri- tis of the hip, but none may discount his conclu- sions, which were based so firmly on long observation.
His dexterity as an operator is almost leg- endary. Many have seen him remove a meniscus with the whole of its posterior horn in less than 5 minutes, and recent American visitors spoke of the fleetness of foot that was demanded of assis- tants chasing round the operating table when a hip joint was disarticulated in little more than 10 minutes. But it was the consummate skill and artistry of his technique that was even more impressive than the speed of it; the speed was indeed “an achievement and not an aim.”
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Who’s Who in Orthopedics
Thomas Porter McMURRAY
1888–1949
Born in Belfast, McMurray graduated in medicine at Queen’s University in 1910 and the next year went to Liverpool as house surgeon to Sir Robert Jones. In 1914, after serving for a short time in France as captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, he was recalled to the Alder Hey Military Orthopedic Hospital in Liverpool where many English, Canadian and American surgeons were trained by Robert Jones and worked with him.
Who’s Who in Orthopedics
It is as a teacher that McMurray will be remem- bered. He was forceful, dogmatic, and even intol- erant if the principles of Hugh Owen Thomas were denied. “You’ve read that in a book” he would say with reproof. He was not an orator, but his words will long be remembered: “Feel it laddie”; “I think you’re splendid”; “Get on with it laddie”; “You’re a credit to us.” The building up of a great postgraduate school of orthopedic studies, with the MChOrth degree of the Univer- sity of Liverpool, is the permanent contribution he made to the surgery of his generation. It is dif- ficult to know the full extent to which he main- tained and enhanced the Liverpool tradition of orthopedic surgery, but a measure of it is in the words of his old students, from the four quarters of the world, inscribed in a recent presentation volume:
This book is signed and presented by your old students as a symbol of their respect and affection and to record for ever the debt they and their country owe to you. By your skill and by your teaching you have enhanced a great tradition: this is now our treasured heritage and by our deeds we will preserve it.
Shortly before his death he was still teaching postgraduate students from Australia, Canada, South Africa and many other parts of the world, and only a few days before he died, when the Hugh Owen Thomas Lecture was delivered in Liverpool, he welcomed “a lost sheep” back to the fold. He died from a heart attack in London on November 16, 1949, while on his way to South Africa to visit his son.
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Walter MERCER
1891–1971
Sir Walter Mercer, Emeritus Professor of Ortho- pedic Surgery in the University of Edinburgh, Past President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the American College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Ireland and Canada, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of South Africa, Master of Orthopedic Surgery honoris causa in the University of Liverpool, Honorary Fellow of the American Orthopedic Association, the Asso- ciation of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh, and Emeritus Fellow of the British Orthopedic Asso- ciation, died 1 month before his 81st birthday.
He was chairman of the British editorial board of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery for 7 years. On the occasion of his 80th birthday in March 1970, a special issue was published in his honor (Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, volume 52-B, no. 1, February 1970), with tributes from surgical colleagues, academic associates and former students, and appreciations of his incredi- ble skill as an operating surgeon, and of his ability as a great teacher and firm but kind examiner.
There were tributes also to his authorship of a wonderfully written and now standard textbook on orthopedic surgery, and to his strength of char- acter in organization. He was acclaimed, though he modestly disowned, as the greatest “general surgeon” within our memory. He was presented
