Australian Dictionary of Biography

Professor Emeritus Maurice Ewing, 1979, Norman Wodetzki

Melbourne University Archives

Maurice Rossie Ewing (1912–1999), professor of surgery, was born on 6 July 1912 at Leith, Edinburgh, youngest of four children of Scottish parents Thomas Miller Ewing, master mariner, and his wife, Annabel, née Rossie. His father and grandfather were captains in the Northern Lighthouse Service. Educated (1919–30) at Daniel Stewart’s College, Edinburgh, Maurice was school captain (1929–30), captain of the first XV rugby team, and graduated dux in his final year. Awarded a bursary to attend the University of Edinburgh (MB, ChB, 1935), he enrolled in its highly regarded medical course, winning medals for outstanding results and graduating top of his year.

From 1935 to 1937 Ewing was house surgeon to the research-oriented Sir David Wilkie at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary before completing his surgical training at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. In 1939 he rejoined the Edinburgh infirmary as demonstrator in anatomy and physiology and outpatient surgeon. He was elected a fellow (1939) of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, later adding credentials for the surgical colleges in England (1946) and Australia (1957). During World War II his maritime roots resurfaced when on 16 October 1940 he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a temporary surgeon lieutenant. Posted to the Royal Naval Hospital at Bighi, Malta, in April 1943, he had been promoted to acting temporary surgeon lieutenant commander by April 1944. In Malta he met English-born Phyllis Edith Parnall, a Volunteer Aid Detachment nurse, whom he married in 1946 at the parish church of St Mary, Hendon, London.

After the war Ewing worked at the Edinburgh infirmary and the Victoria Infirmary, Glasgow, then joined the Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital, London, as a senior lecturer (1947–55). A colleague later described his gently humorous though sometimes disconcerting approach to teaching as ‘interrogatively Socratic’ (Marshall 2000, 44). A skilful communicator, he was honoured with a Hunterian professorship by the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1950, delivering a lecture on rectal tumours. He also won travelling fellowships to Scandinavia and to the Memorial Hospital, New York, where he worked with Hayes Martin, a leading head and neck surgeon. Martin later invited him to produce a volume (1969) of the Operative Surgery series subtitled Head and Neck and Lymph Nodes.

Having been ‘pipped at the post’ for several chairs of surgery in the United Kingdom, in 1955 Ewing was appointed the first James Stewart professor of surgery at the University of Melbourne (MSc, 1956). The university had formed the view, somewhat belatedly, that clinical professors in medicine and surgery were needed ‘to integrate the increasingly complex functions of hospital, teaching and research’ (Poynter and Rasmussen 1996, 152). Surgical beds for Ewing’s professorial unit at the Alfred Hospital were initially limited until the hospital insisted that honorary medical staff ‘surrender the control of some beds’ (Ewing 1972, 957), a potentially explosive situation. In trying circumstances, Ewing showed courtesy, tact, and inclusiveness, and sought ‘to avoid treading on anybody’s toes’ (AHGHC 1996, 96). An academic surgical colleague found him ‘droll and astute, kind as well as canny, with a gentle humour … which was unique and decidedly puckish’ (Marshall 2000, 44).

In addition to his surgical unit at the Alfred, Ewing ran a sub-unit at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and oversaw surgical training at St Vincent’s and Prince Henry’s hospitals. A member of the interim council of Monash University, he campaigned unsuccessfully for an on-campus teaching hospital and helped ease the incorporation of the Monash clinical school into the Alfred before shifting his own surgical base to the RMH in 1962.

Ewing soon gained a reputation for championing new developments in surgery and patient care. At the Alfred he oversaw the introduction of an intensive care unit and a kidney dialysis program. At the RMH in 1956 he conducted the first kidney transplant in Australia and by 1963, with the harnessing of immunosuppressive regimens, a kidney transplant program had been established. He also campaigned for social and cultural solutions to medical challenges: he advocated laws to increase the supply of donor organs; researched the correlation between driver blood alcohol levels and road traffic accidents; urged measures to reduce tobacco consumption; and promoted the mandatory use of seatbelts. He also studied the use of sheepskins to prevent bedsores in convalescing patients and the addition of treated wool to surgical masks.

Ewing’s influence was substantial, with several professors of surgery appointed from his department’s ranks. He was a founding member (1961) of the Surgical Research Society of Australasia and was a popular choice for medical orations and memorial lectures. Held in high regard internationally, he was a visiting professor of surgery ‘from Singapore to Seattle’ (Marshall 2000, 44) and in 1978 worked at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, in developing its academic surgical unit. His working life was full and satisfying and peppered with awards, including an honorary fellowship (1969) of the American College of Surgeons and honorary doctorates from Monash (1970) and Melbourne (1979) universities. He was appointed CBE in 1977.

After his retirement from the university in 1977, Ewing remained a successful Scottish transplant to Australia. He and his wife moved to a farm, ‘Lallarookh,’ at Elphinstone in central Victoria, where his ‘beautiful, soft, surgeon’s hands became calloused workman’s hands’ (Ewing 1999, 7). Having developed dementia, he was in full-time care from 1996 until he died on 24 June 1999 at Kew. He was survived by his wife, his sons Hamish (a surgeon) and Alastair, and his daughter Sarah. The Ewing lecture theatre in the department of surgery at the Royal Melbourne Hospital is named for him.