Australian Dictionary of Biography

Malcolm Benbow Menelaus (1930–2000), surgeon, was born on 11 October 1930 in Melbourne, younger son of Queensland-born Gladys Menelaus, née Wills, and her Victorian-born husband Benbow Menelaus, who rose to be the assistant general manager of the Commercial Bank of Australia Ltd. Malcolm was educated at Adwalton Preparatory School, Malvern, and at Scotch College, Hawthorn (1941–48). He studied medicine at the University of Melbourne (MB, BS, 1954; DM, 1971) and was a resident (1955–57) at Prince Henry’s Hospital, where he became an orthopaedic registrar. On 6 February 1957 at Toorak Presbyterian Church he married Margaret Chalmers Patrick, who had graduated in medicine in the same year and was also a fellow resident at Prince Henry’s. They would have two daughters, Jane, an actor, and Sarah, an artist.

As was common in that period, Menelaus undertook postgraduate training in Britain, where he was admitted as a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, England, in 1958. From 1958 to 1960 he was a registrar at the Rowley Bristow Hospital in Pyrford, Surrey, an institution with an international reputation for orthopaedic surgery. After a term in 1960 at the Birmingham Accident Hospital, he returned to Australia and became a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

Back in Melbourne, Menelaus was appointed as an assistant orthopaedic surgeon at both Prince Henry’s and the Royal Children’s Hospital. He also served as a surgeon lieutenant (1960–64) in the Royal Australian Naval Reserve. In 1963 he ceased work at Prince Henry’s, and ‘The Kids’ became the centre of his surgical activities, enabling him to concentrate on paediatric orthopaedics. His work in this area, especially in the surgical treatment of spina bifida, was highly significant in Australia and overseas, and in 1971 he was awarded a doctor of medicine degree by the University of Melbourne. The book version of his thesis was published in Edinburgh in 1971 as The Orthopaedic Management of Spina Bifida Cystica. It became the accepted text on the subject and had run to three editions by the time of his death, a significant achievement when medical approaches to this condition were changing.

Menelaus ascended the hierarchy at the Royal Children’s, becoming chief orthopaedic surgeon and departmental head in 1982, a position he held until 1990, after which he was a senior surgeon until 1996. He was tall and possessed a penetrating voice and was known for excellent professional relationships with parents and the children he was treating. Beside his work in the operating theatre and in his rooms in Collins Street, he was, according to his friend and colleague Peter Williams, adept at ‘teaching, writing and in clinical research—qualities that are always difficult to find in a surgeon’ (2000, 11). His ninety-five published papers are a testament to his scholarship and his desire to improve the treatment outcomes for seriously disabled children. Menelaus lectured throughout Australia and abroad, while finding time to serve as president (1981–82) of the Australian Orthopaedic Association and as inaugural president (1991–93) of the Australian Paediatric Orthopaedic Society. Outside his profession, in 1986 he was a founding trustee of the Hugh D. T. Williamson Foundation, which fostered major initiatives in education, health, and the arts across Victoria.

Despite working in an occupation which often restricted participation in family life, Menelaus was an active husband and father within a household of two medical practitioners. Margaret worked in women’s health, taking time off to become the family organiser then working part time at the Royal Women’s Hospital. His elder daughter, Jane, recalled that whenever the children interrupted his study of images of spinal deformities, the projector was flicked off so he could help them with schoolwork or listen to their stories. A lover of literature, he was also a skilled painter and a member of the Victorian Artists’ Society. Outside the home he enjoyed the bush and his sailing boat.

Menelaus planned to retire at seventy, but developed glioblastoma, the most malign form of brain cancer. Survived by his wife and two daughters, he died on 12 September 2000 at Fitzroy and was cremated. Williams remembered him as ‘a big man in every sense of the word … [who] walked the world stage with elegance and confidence’ (2000, 11), while Jane described him as a ‘deep thinker who lived by the simple principles of forgiveness and kindness and moderation in all things’ (Menelaus 2023).