Australian Dictionary of Biography

Bill Hughes

Courtesy of the Hughes family

Sir Edward (Bill) Stuart Reginald Hughes (1919–1998), surgeon, was born on 4 July 1919 at Bruthen, Victoria, third of four children of Victorian-born parents Reginald Hawkins Hughes, bank manager, and his wife Annie Grace, née Langford. From childhood, Bill suffered from rapidly deteriorating hearing loss, which began after he contracted measles and would remain a lifelong disability. He was educated at St Paul’s Preparatory School, Malvern, and Melbourne Church of England Grammar School (1927–37), where he did well in chemistry and physics, and excelled at sport, especially tennis, athletics, and Australian Rules football. During his final year, he was a prefect, house captain, and member of the school’s first XVIII.

In 1938 Hughes enrolled in medicine at the University of Melbourne (MB, BS, 1943; MD, 1945; MS, 1946). With the help of a friend, who assisted him with lecture notes, he managed his hearing loss and emerged as an exceptional student. He won prizes and scholarships, including the Keith Levi memorial scholarship for medicine (1943). Sport remained important and he represented the university and Queen’s College in football, rowing, and athletics. On 30 December 1944 he married the Victorian ward nurse Alison Clare Lelean at Queen’s College chapel. They would have four children: Jennifer, Gordon, Ann, and John.

Hughes completed his residency at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He then studied with the orthopaedic surgeon (Sir) Herbert John Seddon for fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCSE) while working in hospitals in London and Oxford (1946–49). Finally overcoming his embarrassment at wearing hearing aids, he found them liberating. It was also at this time, while working at St Mark’s Hospital, London, with (Sir) Clifford Naunton Morgan, that his interest in colorectal surgery was ignited.

Returning to Melbourne in 1950, Hughes briefly resumed work at the Royal Melbourne and the Royal Children’s hospitals. In 1939 he had enlisted in the Citizen Military Forces; his service, mostly part time or reserve, would continue until 1981. For four months from October 1950, he served full time in the rank of temporary lieutenant colonel as an additional surgeon at the British Commonwealth Occupation Force General Hospital, Kure, Japan, during the Korean War. The experience marked the beginning of his lifelong commitment to furthering surgical practice in South-East Asia, particularly as a member of the Royal Melbourne Hospital medical team in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietname) (1964–65). He would rise to colonel (1976) as a part-time consultant surgeon to the army.

Back in Australia in 1951, Hughes had opened a surgical practice in Melbourne and briefly lectured in medicine at the University of Melbourne. Though he remained a committed general surgeon, he played a leading role in advancing colorectal surgery as a speciality within the profession. He was quickly recognised for his brilliance as an anatomist and surgeon, and became renowned for his combination of fierce intellect, personal humour, charm, and exceptional manual dexterity, which has been described as ‘a distinct economy of movement’ (Killingback 2000, 137).

While the Royal Melbourne Hospital was his academic base, Hughes worked in several other local hospitals and juggled a formidable workload of operations and teaching. He also built a large private practice that he organised like a hospital department of surgery, with scrub nurses and a specialist stoma therapist. Believing in careful documentation and follow-up, he compiled statistics on his patients that for a time were ‘the only significant Australian statement produced on the long-term survival of patients after surgery’ (Killingback 2000, 137). Developing an interest in sphincter-saving surgery, he practised innovative techniques that improved the quality of life of patients with rectal cancer and ulcerative colitis.

In 1957 Hughes established the QT Association of Victoria (later Ileostomy Association) to improve the care of stoma patients. He later convened the inaugural meeting of the Australian Association of Stomal Therapy Nurses (1971). In 1965 he travelled to South Africa, England, and Asia as the Sir Arthur Sims Commonwealth travelling professor, and subsequently delivered several prestigious lectures overseas, including the Hunterian oration (1965), the Abraham Colles lecture (1977), and the Digby memorial lecture (1979). He also won the Australian Medical Association’s Henry Simpson Newland prize (1962) and was the first recipient of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons’(RACS) Sir Hugh Devine medal (1977).

Hughes was a prolific writer and published over 300 papers and six textbooks during his career. He was also a ‘man of big ideas and concepts’ (Nicks 1980, 667) and he used his long involvement with the RACS (vice-president 1974; president 1975–78) to pursue important reform. Of particular significance was his leadership of the Road Trauma Committee (founding chairman 1970–74), whose advocacy led to world-leading legislation in Victoria that made wearing seatbelts compulsory and introduced mandatory blood alcohol tests for adult road crash casualties. ‘[Ours is] the profession which sees the aftermath of a road accident,’ wrote Hughes, ‘the horrible and irreversible mutilation, the griefs, the brave attempts to repair, the heartbreaking rehabilitation. And it is the profession which must help find a solution to this problem’ (Hughes 1975, 671).

In 1973, soon after moving his private practice to St Frances Xavier Cabrini Hospital, Malvern, Hughes was appointed professor and head of Monash University’s department of surgery at the Alfred Hospital. Over the next decade, he received honorary fellowships at several surgical colleges, including the American College of Surgeons (1976) and RCSE (1985). He was appointed CBE in 1971 and knighted in 1977. In the late 1970s he played a leading role in the establishment of the Menzies Foundation (chairman 1979–88; deputy chairman 1988–96). By 1978 he was becoming restricted by advancing Parkinson’s disease, although his influence as a teacher and colleague continued until his retirement in December 1984. He was subsequently awarded an honorary doctorate of laws by Monash University (1986). Survived by his wife and children, he died in Cabrini Hospital on 16 October 1998 and was cremated. His ashes were laid to rest at St George’s Anglican Church, Malvern.

A man of energy and dynamism, Hughes was admired as an inspirational leader and exemplary teacher. He was well-organised and motivated towards excellence, but also had a ‘disarming simplicity’ (Nicks 1980, 667) and was a ‘colourful personality with an unusual sense of humour, who enjoyed being provocative, if not outrageous’ (Killingback 2000, 137). Outside work, he enjoyed family road trips to visit his sister, Constance, who lived on a sheep station at Beechal in south-west Queensland. He was a keen supporter of the Melbourne Football Club and enjoyed horse racing. In 1996 the annual ESR Hughes lecture was established by the colonic and rectal surgery section of the RACS. Two years later, the RACS inaugurated an award in his name to recognise distinguished contributions to surgery, and in 1999 the Sir Edward Hughes memorial clinical research prize was established by Cabrini Monash University department of surgery.