'Becoming a Man of Experience': Interview with C. Ruthven B. Blackburn

Abstract

118 Health & History, 2013. 15/1 ‘Becoming a Man of Experience’: Interview with C. Ruthven B. Blackburn Warwick Anderson Charles Ruthven Bickerton Blackburn AC (b. 1913) was a pioneer of clinical research at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney. Appointed Bosch professor and head of the Department of Medicine at the University of Sydney in 1957, succeeding C.G. Lambie, Blackburn built up academic units across the teaching hospitals and established chairs in a number of clinical specialties. By the time of his retirement in 1978, the department boasted six professors and ten other full-time academic staff, and there were professorial units in all the teaching hospitals at the University of Sydney. In 1979, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians awarded Blackburn the Neil Hamilton Fairley Medal. Though in his hundredth year, his body frail and voice reedy, Blackburn remains sharp and incisive. WA: Today is Monday 4th February 2013. I’m sitting here in Professor Ruthven Blackburn’s apartment overlooking Sydney Harbour. I’m about to talk to him about the impact of World War II on medicine in Sydney. Thank you very much for allowing me to talk to you about this. I thought we could perhaps start with the prewar years—you were a medical student at Sydney before the war weren’t you? RB: I graduated formally in January 1937—I finished my course in December ‘36. WA: I suppose it was almost inevitable you’d go into medicine, given your background? RB: Yes. That’s a good word to use. It was inevitable. In ancient times the eldest son was expected more or less to do what the father did. My father was a first-generation medico.1 I don’t recall thinking of anything other than medicine. WA: Do you remember any particular influences on you during the medical course? Interview with C. Ruthven B. Blackburn 119 RB: I remember the people who taught me but I do not recall their teaching. I can recall various sets of students and teachers. I can remember ‘Pete’ Davies, professor of Physiology, and I remember people playing cards or reading the newspaper at the back of his class.2 We were not especially interested in what he was saying, which now I believe was his fault. I can remember other people: the man who lectured us in endocrinology because we knew that if we went to his last, or second last, lecture we would find out what we were going to be asked in the exam. I can remember some lousy lecturers, and I can remember quite a bit about people that way—but what they taught, no. There were some exceptions of course. In years gone by, I was selected as the person who arranged our class reunions. On one occasion, as a surprise to the group, instead of me asking somebody else to give a talk on something, I asked Image 1: Ruthven Blackburn, 1939. Courtesy C.R.B. Blackburn. 120 WARWICK ANDERSON my group to tell us what they thought of their lecturers. Now this was twenty or thirty years after graduation, and I found that my recollections were similar to other people’s stories. I got a nil return when it came to the importance of the teaching. WA: When you graduated in medicine what did you imagine your career would be? RB: I knew within minutes what my career was going to be. My father was a very well known physician in Sydney and had, I suppose, a big practice. It was generally considered that I would be a physician. In my second year of residency I did research for my MD on weekends and nights. I was pathology registrar at Prince Alfred Hospital and that meant I had to relieve in pathology, in the old sense of the word, and also in biochemistry, bacteriology, and haematology. So I had to have some sort of technical training. I did research at night because my father had said to me that it was very important for me to get my higher degree out of the way as soon as possible. He was quite right. I spent my nights and the weekends in...