FREDERIC WOOD JONES AS A TEACHER AND ON TEACHING

Aust. N . Z . J . Swg. (1994) 64, 710-720

SURGICAL HISTORY

FREDERIC WOOD JONES AS A TEACHER AND ON TEACHING

B. E. CHRISTOPHERS

THE PAST OF SCIENCE IS A MATTER OF GREAT MOMENT

This seminar was arranged to mark the 40th Anniversary of the founding of the Section of Medical History, AMA (Victorian Branch). It is appropriate that the subject of this paper should be Frederic Wood Jones. He had an abiding interest in medical history, dating from his student days. During his undergraduate years he was on the editorial staff of, and for some time editor of, The London Hospital Gazette, the student’s magazine of his Alma Mater, the Medical College of the London Hospital.

Although Wood Jones’ contributions to the gazette as an undergraduate were all anonymous it is almost certain that at least two articles on medical history in the gazette during this time were written by him. One was entitled ‘Some incidents in the life of a famous surgeon’ which was about Sir William Blizard, one of the co-founders of the Medical College of the London Hospital.

When he was senior demonstrator of anatomy at St Thomas’s Hospital in 191 1 under Frederick Gymer Parsons, Wood Jones wrote a series of three articles on bygone anatomists of St Thomas’s, Johannis Browne,’ Thomas Whartod and William Che~elden.~ Some of his other published works including ‘Anatomy and the medical student’s and ‘A necrology of anatomists’’ relate directly to medical history. In his other works the historical aspects of the subject were never neglected. There can be no better example of this than in his book Man’s Place Among the Mamnials.’ The first two chapters of the book are devoted exclusively to the historical aspects of the question.

In the first few paragraphs of this book published in 1929, Wood Jones argues that the past of science is a matter of great moment:

‘It is a waste of time, according to modem fashion, to turn back in order to review the successive stages through which scientific knowledge has passed . . . But this atti- tude may be unduly persisted in: too little regard may be

Correspondence: Dr B. E. Christophers. 377 Church St, Richmond, Vic. 3 I 2 I . Australia.

Based on a paper given at a seminar on medical history at the University of Melbourne, 2 October 1993.

Accepted for publication 10 February 1994.

given to the historical aspect of a scientific question. Indeed it would not be unjust to say that in much modem work an ignorance of the antecedent phases of the subject, although accounted almost as a virtue, has robbed the final product of a great part of any value it might otherwise possess. It is always well to have an eye to the origins of our beliefs if we are to undertake to defend them or to attempt their destruction.’

One of the founders of this Society, Kenneth Fitz- patrick Russell (Fig. I) , was a student of Wood Jones at the University of Melbourne. In the teaching of the history of medicine in Australia, Russell was one of the pioneers. He graduated from medicine in 1935 and was appointed a lecturer in Anatomy in 1937 and in 1938 became a senior lecturer in that subject. From 1969 until his retirement in 1976 he held a personal chair in Anatomy and in Medical History at the University of Melbourne. Soon after his retirement this Society organized a Sym- posium in his honour. At the time of his retirement he

Fig. 1. Kenneth Fitzpatrick Russell (by courtesy Medical History Unit. University of Melbourne).

FREDERIC WOOD JONES 71 I

was the only Professor of Medical History in Australia. That Wood Jones strongly influenced Russell in the

choice of his career is something the present author feels sure that Russell would not have denied. Both deserve acknowledgement for their role as progenitors of this Society.

WOOD JONES’ FIRST TEACHING POST Wood Jones’ first teaching post was at his Alma Mater (The London Hospital Medical College) as an unpaid junior demonstrator in anatomy. That was in the latter half of 1904 before he had completed his combined medical and science course.

‘NO MEDICAL STUDENT WAS AN ALL-ROUND FOOL’: A PARABLE

Of that first position as a teacher Wood Jones wrote many years later:

‘In my first post as an unpaid junior demonstrator - an office which, as I was informed by the Warden, entailed my wearing a frock coat and silk hat - I learned that, though I might be somewhat better informed about my subject than were the students assigned to me, there were situations in which I should cut a poor, or even ridiculous figure, if set in competition with my students. I soon subscribed to the creed, to which I have ever since held, that no student is altogether and in all circumstances a fool. I might be able to make him look foolish in an oral examination in anatomy; but in some circumstances of life I know very well that he could make me look even more ridiculous. I therefore began, perhaps earlier in my career than some teachers, to consider that my slightly greater knowledge in one subject gave me little warrant for assuming any general superiority to the average medical student. I came to believe that no medical student was an all-round fool; but in one school I came near to reversing my opinion. It was my lot to have in my class a man whose knowledge of his subject was at the very lowest ebb. He looked foolish and he was foolish. He played no games; he had no ostensible method of wasting his time. He did not drink. He appeared to have no vices. Apparently there was no channel in which, vicariously, his talents ran to waste. He, I decided at last, was what I had believed did not exist - an all-round fool who was a student of medicine. It happened that a ward entertainment was announced; a distinguished entertainer was coming to the hospital to spend an hour in relieving the monotony of the patients in the wards. Staff and students gathered in the ward. There was a long, expectant period of waiting, and then a telegram announcing that the celebrity could not fulfil the engagement. Could anyone do anything? The patients were anxiously awaiting an entertainment. I could not even play the piano. No member of the staff seemed to be able to step into the breach - and then my student said very modestly that perhaps the patients would like a little conjuring. Without more ado he proceeded to produce half-crowns from the nose of an elderly Semitic diabetic: he made the ace of hearts appear miraculously on the pillow of a dazed

young lady suffering from anaemia. For an hour he held the ward spellbound and charmed, while I looked on admiringly. My creed was not shown false and, after thirty years’ experience as a teacher, it is still my creed. I hope I shall never conduct an oral examination without remembering that the student whose ignorance seemed to be contemptible could make me look very foolish in some other field of human activity.’’

MEDICAL OFFICER ON THE

In November of 1904 Wood Jones finished his course by obtaining the degree of Bachelor of Surgery. Two months later, in January of 1905 he accepted a position overseas as Medical Officer to the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company. This took him to the headquarters of the Company in Singapore; then as Medical Officer to their Cable Station on the Cocos-Keeling Is., and finally as Ship’s Surgeon on the Cable Ship Patrol. He did not retum to England until the March of 1907.

Soon after his return to England Wood Jones resumed his teaching position at The London Hospital Medical College, this time as a fully fledged paid demonstrator in anatomy under his mentor Arthur Keith. It was not to be for long, as 7 months later he received a message from Grafton Elliot Smith in Cairo requesting assistance with archaeological work in Nubia. Elliot Smith was then Professor of Anatomy at the Government School of Medicine at Cairo. Wood Jones left post haste for Egypt and was met by Elliot Smith in Cairo. From here they set out for Shellal in Nubia and by the last week in October of 1907 they were already camped and working there.

COCOS-KEELING IS.

WOOD JONES RETURNS TO ENGLAND FROM EGYPT

In May of 1908 Wood Jones returned to London from Egypt. Not long after his return he was appointed Medical Officer to a private asylum. This asylum was The Priory (Psychiatric) Hospital, Priory Lane, Roehampton, a sub- urb of London, and Wood Jones resided there for the duration of his appointment.

LECTURER IN ANATOMY AT MANCHESTER In 1909 Elliot Smith resigned his post in Cairo and accepted the Chair of Anatomy at Manchester. He took up his duties there in the northern autumn of 1909 and immediately invited Wood Jones to join his staff as Lecturer in Anatomy. Wood Jones accepted this invitation.

THOMAS POMFRET KILNER One of Wood Jones’ students at Manchester in 1909-10 was Thomas Pomfret Kilner. He was Wood Jones’ junior by only 1 1 years having been born in 1890. In 1960 the author received a letter from him attesting to Wood Jones’ prowess as a teacher. Part of that letter reads:

‘. . . Although there were long periods during which we never met, FWJ was a very personal friend of mine from the time when he lectured to me as a student in

CHRISTOPHERS

Fig. 2. Photograph of Grafton Elliot Smith taken in Manchester.

Manchester to the time when I visited him shortly before his death at the Westminster Hospital in London.

‘I vividly recall the way in which he made Anatomy a very living and interesting subject bringing omithorhyn- chus and echidna into the lecture theatre to illustrate the panniculus carnosus when talking about the dartos muscle, etc.

‘He encouraged youngsters like myself by deeming us worthy to receive reprints of his articles and this to such an extent that when I qualified I spent two years as a full time demonstrator of Anatomy and had ideas of devoting the rest of my life to the subject. Elliot Smith was then our Professor.

‘The first World War soon changed these intentions and I drifted from Army work into Plastic Surgery; but before I went overseas I married and FWJ lent me a house in Ventnor, Isle-of-Wight for my honeymoon . . .”

SIR BENJAMIN RANK - THOMAS KILNER In his book, Hands and Heads, Sir Benjamin Rank who was a pioneer and leader in the field of plastic surgery in Australia, recalled that Thomas Kilner and Harold Gillies were the only two plastic surgeons in England up till World War 11.

Both had worked as plastic surgeons at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, during and after World War I. Benja- min Rank served his apprenticeship in plastic surgery under Harold Gillies in the late 1930s. It was not until after World War I1 that he came to know and enjoy the friendship of Thomas Kilner. Eventually Kilner became the Nuffield Professor of Plastic Surgery at Oxford, an appointment he held from 1945 to 1968 and he was twice President of the British Association of Plastic Surgery.

ILLNESS OF GEORGE CLUNIES-ROSS Just as Wood Jones’ stay as a teacher at The London Hospital Medical College was short so also was his stay

at Manchester. He was there for only 7 months. It was brief because it was interrupted by an urgent plea for help from Cocos-Keeling Is. The message was that his future father-in-law George Clunies-Ross was seriously il l and suffering pain. Wood Jones left England immediately for Cocos-Keeling to bring him back to England for treatment.

ST THOMAS’S: CYRIL LEAROYD Upon returning from his mission of mercy in June of 1910 Wood Jones accepted the position as Senior Dem- onstrator at St Thomas’s under Frederick Gymer Parsons.

Cyril George Learoyd, a student of his at St Thomas’s, wrote the following eulogy of him. This remains perhaps the most elegant attestation of Wood Jones’ genius as a teacher.

Master, whose tire kindled our glad surprise, brought tropic seas to drear dissecting room, so that we heard the thunder and the boom of surf on reef - and hark, the boobies’ cries - or vitalised some skull, unwound its scroll, or brought some fossil form to life again, or thread of nerve in pickled flesh to pain, you made the living and the dead one whole. So when we wandered all the earth we sensed your voice and watched your clear cut features play, pausing. perhaps, in moments of that bliss of finding some rare thing, triumphant, tensed, seeking to share our joy, then would we say. What would I give to hear Wood Jones on this! I”

It will come as no surprise to the reader to learn that C. G . Learoyd was an author of some note. Some of his books were reviewed in The Medical Jourwal of Australia in 1940, and the following review is reproduced precisely as it was printed as a matter of historical interest 50 years later in the same Journal (Fig. 3).

~~~ ~

50 years ago in The Medical Journal of Australia

A BOOK OF SHORT STORIES “Physicians’ Fare” is a book of attractive short stories which will be welcomed by medical readers.’ The author, presuinably a medical man. has a silt for nwrative and for surprises. All the stories have a mcdical tang about them and they cover murder. mystery and the ordinary things of life. Not one is dull. “A Nice Quiet Locum-Tencncy” is a startling tale of a young woinan graduate who acts a h locum /enens for a general para- lytic: “Murder on the Fen” rcvcals the tnurdcr by a point in anatomy: “Beloved Rret hrcii“ shows how some niedical men in ;I \niall place love one another; and so on. These stories can be rccomnicndcd as likely to nppc;il to anyone with medical knowledge; most of them arc reprinted from magazincs ;ind ho\pitiil journals. I t is ii p i ~ y tliilt thc price is so high.

I. ‘ ‘ I ’ h ~ ~ ~ c ~ d ~ w ’ I JK”. by C (I Lcuuyd: I Y I Y . Lotidun. Ldudrd Arnold mid Conipmy. Crurn 8 ,” . pp. JO?. I’CICL: 11. 65. nri.

MED J AUST 1940; 1: 446

Fig. 3. From The Medical Journal of Australiu 1990 1: 548.

FREDERIC WOOD JONES 713

MOVE TO THE LONDON SCHOOL OF MEDICINE FOR WOMEN

a student gave a lame reply to his question. He said ‘Where did you get that?’ ‘Little Cunnin.ehum’ [a stand-

Frederick Parsons was not only lecturer in Anatomy at St Thomas’s but was also a part time lecturer in Anatomy at The London School of Medicine for Women. It was decided late in 1912 that both posts should be upgraded and Parsons had to make the choice between the two. He chose to remain at St Thomas’s and Wood Jones was appointed as Director of the Department of Anatomy, to The London School of Medicine for Women. In 1914 this post was elevated to that of a Professorship.

HELEN INGLEBY

Helen Ingleby was a student of Wood Jones at The London School of Medicine for Women in the years 1913-14 (Fig. 4) and the author received the following letter from her dated 23 April 1960:

‘. . . He [Wood Jones] was the best teacher I ever had and I have always maintained that as far as medicine is concerned, and in other things also, I owe him all I know. I was fortunate enough to be in his class as a second year student when he first came to The London School of Medicine for Women. He encouraged original observa- tion in his students. He had no objection to a mistake provided one had thought the thing out. On one occasion

ard text book ofanatomy at that time] was the-hesitant reply. ‘D---M Little Cunninghunt, look in the body!’ I have always maintained that that was his slogan . . .’

Wood Jones was a keen naturalist and much to our delight kept newts, chameleons, tree frogs and such things in his room. When he was in hospital with appen- dicitis the solemn senior class sent him flowers. We uppish juniors preferred a comic illustrated booklet ‘How to tell the birds from the flowers.’ I think he got a few chuckles out of it.

His lectures were brilliant. The class hung on his words: you could literally hear a pin drop. In other schools anatomy was considered a dull subject, but not with us. To me it was fascinating. I even went so far as to take the primary FRCS merely because I enjoyed it!

After my student days I did not meet Wood Jones again until he gave the annual inaugural lecture at St George’s Hospital on the subject of John Hunter which I think only Wood Jones could have made.”’ Helen Ingleby went on to take higher degrees in medicine, and became a physician of renown.

Among the signatures of members of staff of the London School of Medicine for Women in Fig. 5 is that of M. F. Lucas Keene (her married name) second from

Fig. 4. Students and staff at the London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women (University of London) 1913.

714 CHRISTOPHERS

the top in the last row. In Fig. 4 she appears as M. Lucas: second from the right in the second row from the front. She was the first woman to have a Chair of Anatomy in England. One of her important contributions to Anatomy was her work in 1927 on the development of the supra renal gland. (The author would be grateful for any information concerning the life and or works of any of the persons named in Figs 4 and 5.)

THE WORDS THAT ENCHANTED Thomas Kilner wrote that Wood Jones 'made anatomy a very living and interesting subject.' Cyril Learoyd wrote that Wood Jones 'vitalized some skull . . . brought some fossil form to life again'. Helen Ingleby wrote that 'the class hung on his word'. Are the words that enchanted entirely lost? Fortunately the essence of some of these lectures are unextinguished. In the preface to his first work on Comparative Anatomy, Arboreal Man, Wood Jones wrote:

'. . . many of the details and the ideas included in these pages I have been accustomed to incorporate in the ordinary routine teaching of Medical Students at Man- Chester University, at St Thomas's Hospital, and at The London School of Medicine for Women . . . The figures which are reproduced here are selected from those drawn to illustrate the Lectures'.'' In the reading of this book comes the understanding as to why the students at these Medical Schools were bewitched by his lectures.

THE ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS When Wood Jones left the London School of Medicine for Women to join the Royal Army Medical Corps

7- 1919 ,.L.l* .I.. as.-. -

L0.W IrrU m u .o..mr1 " W L " .I*U.l II ... I".

i..,n"*,rr .I "nu) . .urn. *.nm ..".I.,.. .."A"'. ..*.,.

cJ4r'. ti-: $.Ak- P h

Fig. 5. Letter to Wood Jones from the staff of the London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women (Univer- sity of London), dated June I9 19.

(RAMC) his teaching activities did not stop. In addition to his medical duties at the Special Military Surgical Hospital at Shepherds Bush, he gave a series of lectures in applied anatomy to officers of the RAMC. These lectures formed the basis of his anatomical classic The Principles ofAnatomy as Seen in the Hand.I3 That it has been accepted as a classic is shown by the fact that it was reprinted by The Classics of Surgery Library in America in 1986. In this book we see wedded an anatomical and physiological monograph on the hand; not a textbook but a series of lectures fashioned into a work of art.

THE LESSON IN ANATOMY For those medical graduates of the University of Mel- bourne who were students of Wood Jones, this book of his, above all others, should be remembered with nostal- gia. In the frontispiece of this book is reproduced a copy of Rembrandt's 'The Lesson in Anatomy'.'-' Wood Jones writes of this painting as follows:

'The casual way in which some artists regard hands and feet finds its expression in the work not only of the lesser ones, nor even in connection with illustrations altogether devoid of any attempt at reproducing precise anatomy. Rembrandt himself is among the culprits, won- derful anatomist though he was, for in his famous 'Lesson in Anatomy' Nicholas Tulp is represented displaying the superficial flexor muscles of the fingers arising from the radial condyle of the humerus. It would appear that Rembrandt must have drawn the details of anatomy from a right arm, and then have transferred them to the left arm of his wonderfully realistic subject. There are many who admire this great work and yet fail to notice this very strange anatomical error.'

This famous painting was parodied by medical students in issue 136 (1935) in their magazine The Speculum. In the resulting caricature the face of Wood Jones replaced that of Tulp and the faces of contemporary students of Wood Jones replaced those students of Tulp (Fig. 6). These students were Peter Parsons, John Connell, Victor Knight, Vincent Bristow, William Refshauge, David Jackson, John Parry and John Merry.

THE CARPAL FORMULA Under the chapter heading of the Carpal Formula in The Principles of Anatoniy as Seen in the Hand, one finds a comment on medical education and a gentle dig at those examiners who sought answers to questions on anatomical trivia.I3

'In the normal human carpus there are eight small bones, the description of which, and the methods for determining their identity, and the side to which they belong occupy a lamentably large part of the education of the medical student. The author regards it as one of the defects of present day medical education that the student may occupy a period of fifteen months with good and honest work acquiring as sound a knowledge of the general structure of the human body as can reasonably be gained in that short time, and at the end of this apprenticeship meet an examiner who tests this knowledge in


which did endear him to his students, and which was one of the reasons he was so successful as a teacher.

Fig. 6. The Anatomy Lesson (Remnant). Among the celebrated anatomists in the picture may be seen: Piccolominus Pete Parson (of Pisa), The Cadaver, a condemned and censored criminal, Vincentius Angina Bristo (of Bologna), Johannes Ambrose Parry (of Paris), William His Knight (of Folkstone, Kent), Falloppius Fitz-Jackson (of Amsterdam), Raphael Refshauge (of Rotterdam), Eustachius Johannes Connell (of Copenhagen). The whole production staged by Master Nicholas Wood-Pulp (of no fixed abode), who may be seen wearing his old-school hat and saying, ‘Of course, this is all wrong!’ Several absent faces may be noticed in the picture including those of Andrew Snape, Vesalius and Jack Hunter, Professor 0s-ome, when shown the picture, remarked, ‘It is entirely without physiological significance. It is a mere Remnant, and depicts nothing but a lot of anatomist ruff-necks.’ From The Speculum (Journal of the Melbourne Medical Student’s Society) 1935; 136: plate (iii) between pages 26 and 27.

twenty minutes spent haggling about the details of a carpal bone. Here we will avoid probing into any minutiae that could possibly arm an examiner with another trivial but deadly weapon.’

WHY ANATOMISTS DIE The Principles of Anatomy as Seen in the Hand was not published until 1920.13 By that time Wood Jones had moved to Adelaide. During his second year as Professor there he gave a talk to the Medical Students’ Society at this University. The title of the talk was ‘A Necrology of Anatomists’6 and it began thus:

‘I know well that the title that I have chosen is un- English, pedantic, and in every way bad. But I am at a loss for a better. Had I written it as “Why Anatomists Die” it would at once have been apparent to every medical student that a much more illuminating essay, and one far more to the point, could have been written about the title, “Why Anatomists Live”. For in truth it may well be asked and an answer might be difficult to come by. Again, had I selected “The Cause of Death of Teachers of Anatomy,” the essay might have been brief since all that need have been done could have been summed up by writing “Medical Students.” ’

This extract from his talk is included here for no better reason than that it is an example of his inimitable humour,

RAYMOND JACK LAST There is every possibility that one of the students present at this talk was Raymond Jack Last for he had started his medical course at the University of Adelaide in 1919. After graduating, Last spent a year at the Royal Adelaide Hospital as a House Surgeon and then practised medicine for many years in the country town of Booleroo Centre, South Australia. There he became a self-taught surgeon. In the late 1930s he went to England in order to study for a Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. The outbreak of war interrupted this plan and he tried to join the British Army but was refused because he was on the reserve of the Australian Army Medical Corps. While on his way back to Australia to enlist the ship on which he and his wife Margaret were travelling, the Napier Star, was torpedoed in the Irish Sea. They were on the only lifeboat to be rescued. Rejected by the British Army he joined the British Red Cross Society and was posted as Officer in Charge of the Abyssinian Medical Unit of the Society. He held this post from 1941 to 1944, and during this time was Physician to Emperor Haile Selassie. Em- peror Haile Selassie was an anxious and inquisitive onlooker when Last removed his son’s appendix. By 1945 the British Army had relaxed its silly regulations and Last served as Commanding Officer to a medical unit in Borneo.

At the age of 44 in 1947 Last was able to enrol at the Royal College of Surgeons of England to study for his Fellowship. Thus it was that after 26 years he again became a student of Wood Jones, for by this time Wood Jones was professor of human and comparative anatomy at the College. Last obtained his English Fellowship then joined the staff of the College as a demonstrator in anatomy under Wood Jones. Gout had plagued Wood Jones since his first bout in 1913. During one of his bad attacks of gout when he was unable to draw illustrations on the blackboard he called upon Last to help him with the lecturing and thereafter Wood Jones delegated some of the lecturing to him. In 1951 Last succeeded Wood Jones as Professor of Applied Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, a position that he held until his retirement in 1970. Last bequeathed a large sum of money in 1989 to the University of Adelaide to endow a Wood Jones’ Chair in Anthropological and Compara- tive Anatomy. He died on 1 January 1993 in Malta.

In the Schedule of the Deed that Last executed with the University of Adelaide he set out the reasons for his bequest. l 4 Part of that Schedule reads:

‘Frederic Wood Jones has never been adequately hon- oured, during or after his lifetime, for his superlative scholarship or his inspired teaching. He was appreciated more perhaps by his students than by his contemporary academic colleagues. None of the universities he was associated with has endowed a chair or even a lectureship in his memory. Perhaps it is significant that his only epitaph is an annual lecture endowed by the Medical Students’ Society of Manchester. Perhaps the green-eyed

CHRISTOPHERS 716

goddess played her part? . . . He was a superb teacher, full of trenchant phrases, a splendid blackboard artist (often bimanually) and he made his subject a living and fascinating reality. For example, a lecture he gave on the calvaria, the oval upper part of the skull above the eyebrows, last an hour and held his audience spellbound.’ (The annual lecture endowed by the Medical Students’ Society of Manchester lapsed many years ago.)

ANATOMICAL TRIVIA

By logic, humour and example Wood Jones conducted a constant campaign against the teaching of anatomical trivia. As another example of this campaign was a submission that he made to the Council of the University of Adelaide when he was Professor there. The submission was on the question of the employment of external examiners:

‘Despite the academic arguments which can be brought forward in favour of the principle of employing external examiners to work in conjunction with the student’s own teachers, I am of the opinion that examination of the students here can be carried out better in the absence of any external examiner - when external is taken to mean ‘derived from some other University or teaching body’. That more than one examiner is desirable in the interests of the candidate is obvious, and Drs Scott and Cilento (Raphael Cilento, later Sir Raphael Cilento) will each take their share in conducting all examinations in this department. Each candidate will be separately and inde- pendently examined by three examiners. In this way I am sure that justice can be done to candidates. We have in Adelaide the great privilege that we need not teach trivial detail which we know to be mere academic accomplish- ment and of no practical use to the medical graduate. In other places these details cannot be omitted since a demand for their display is made by the external examiner. I should be sorry if we lost that priviledge of doing what we believe to be the best sort of teaching, and I feel sure we should lose it if our students had to cater for the academic demands of an outsider’. I s

AMERICA AND AMERICANS

Early in 1926 Wood Jones visited America and spent nearly 3 months observing and conferring with Anthro- pological Institutes, medical schools and museums there. This visit was financed and arranged by the Rockefeller Foundation. Six days after his return to Adelaide in May of 1926 he wrote to Ulrica Hubbe saying:

‘ I went to America quite prepared to dislike Americans - and I came back loving them, or at least those in the scientific world with whom I came in contact. California is a dreamland to me. I loved the place, the people and the whole atmosphere of it.’ I’

HIS MOVE TO HONOLULU Towards the end of his seventh year in Adelaide Wood Jones was getting restless. He wrote in a letter to Arthur Keith dated 12 August 1926 saying: ‘ I want a post in England or the States one day before long’.” Within 2

months of writing that letter he had accepted a position at the University of Hawaii as Professor of Anthropology, financed by the Rockefeller Foundation. His particular commission there was anthropological research on the question of race biology, and he commenced his duties there in March of 1927.

Within 2 years his love for America and Americans had soured somewhat. This he made perfectly clear in a letter to Ulrica Hubbe from Honolulu dated 20 March 1929. Here he outlined those qualities of a teacher that offended him and those aspects of teaching that he disliked. These views were described with a certain forthrightness:

‘They talk of a new grant of $40000 coming in next year for the work here - from some other foundation of millionaire’s money. But I have got to the stage of being anaesthetic to the talk of millions. I don’t care a damn if billions are forthcoming here - I am as my colleagues say - thru with Americans. Although they have all the money and all the equipment, somehow it is all rotten. . . Everyone everywhere has graduated from somewhere or other. Everyone can talk the most superficial profundities about sex. life, psychology, anything. No one seems to have any understanding or insight - there is a curse of superficiality over everything. So there you are you see . , . I believe I could tap financial sources for large sums to conduct the most useless and absurd investiga- tions. I know I could lecture and get paid well for doing it almost all the time. I could get the shallowest nonsense published, paid for, praised and welcomed - and I am going down-town to cable Melbourne ‘terms agreeable’, though the salary is less and I shan’t have the dollars behind me. I t is difficult to explain why ‘University’ things here are so shoddy and unsatisfactory: but this is what is happening just at this moment. Separated by some 50 yards from my new department is another University building. A person there is lecturing on something. He lectures like a street corner politician - declaiming in a loud and nasal voice, and were his voice not so nasal and his accent so queer I could attend his lectures in my room. All through this discourse are pauses and each pause filled by loud laughter or clapping from the students. It is an asset for a teacher - and indication of his success and a lever with the authorities - when rounds of applause punctuate his classes. This is going on now. It is only a symptom and maybe a trivial one: but it is part of a syndrome that has the life centres of American education well infected. So I think it is quite certain I shall return to Australia and be in Melbourne next March’.“

MELBOURNE Wood Jones was appointed to the Chair of Anatomy at the University of Melbourne and arrived in Melbourne in February 1930, a month earlier than he had expected. One may be tempted to conclude from this letter that it was the ‘declaimer’ or the ‘dollar’ or even the cultural chasm that drove Wood Jones from Hawaii. It was none of these: it was anatomy that lured him to Melbourne. Anatomy was his first love. not anthropology: and above all he missed the teaching of it.


Sydney Sunderland (later Sir Sydney Sunderland) was Wood Jones’ star student at the University of Melbourne (Fig. 7). Just as Last had succeeded Wood Jones at the Royal College of Surgeons of England so Sunderland succeeded Wood Jones at the University of Melbourne. Sydney Sunderland graduated in 1935 (the same year as Kenneth Russell) and at Wood Jones’ behest was MR JAMES GUEST

with an engaging style. He believed in the creative use of knowledge rather than the accumulation of facts. He believed in unifying ideas and guiding principles. In other words, to him education was lighting a lamp and not filling a bucket’.

appointed a senior lecturer in anatomy the following year. At the end of 1937 Wood Jones left Melbourne to become Professor of Anatomy at Manchester: a few weeks later Sydney Sunderland went to Oxford to work with Le Gros Clark who was Professor of Anatomy there. While Sun- derland was in England he was appointed to the chair of Anatomy in Melbourne which he assumed in 1939. In 1956 Sunderland was appointed full-time dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Melbourne, a position that he held until 1961 when he was appointed Professor of Experimental Neurology. He held this position until his retirement.

On 20 November 1990 Sir Sydney Sunderland delivered the 1990 University of Melbourne Medical Society Lecture in the lecture theatre that bears his name. The title of his lecture was ‘The Melbourne Medical School and some of its “characters” 1931-75’.19 During the course of this lecture he said: ‘the most charismatic character of that period [was] Frederic Wood Jones . . . He was a brilliant and inspiring teacher, a fluent lecturer

Fig. 7. Wood Jones with Edward Ford (later Sir Edward Ford) and Sydney Sunderland (later Sir Sydney Sunderland) outside the old Anatomy School with Wilson Hall in the background. 1937 (by courtesy of Mr Ronald Lowe).

Mr James Guest, a member of this Society, was appointed the Thomas Vicary Lecturer for 1989.*” The lecture was delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. James Guest was a student of Wood Jones at the Univer- sity of Melbourne and the title of his lecture was John Hunter’s disciple, Frederic Wood Jones. In this lecture he gave an enlightened appreciation of Wood Jones’ life and works, and of his teaching he said: ‘It was as a zoology student in 1936 that I first met him [Wood Jones]. He was a superb lecturer and an inspiring and popular teacher.’

The Thomas Vicary Lecture is an historical lecture in anatomy or surgery and Wood Jones was awarded the lectureship in 1954 and was very disappointed that illness prevented him from giving the lecture.

ADVICE TO STUDENTS Often with Wood Jones’ humour came a serious lesson. In the early 1940s at the University of Melbourne Medical School, an anecdote concerning him was still current. Wood Jones had relinquished his Professorship at Mel- bourne at the end of 1937. The anecdote went something like this: He was addressing the students shortly before an oral examination; and spoke t h u s 2 ’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, an oral examination will shortly befall you. One of your examiners, a Melbourne surgeon, will almost certainly hand you a small bone and ask you to name it and to side it. The name of the bone is the nasal bone and quite frankly it is impossible to side it. I suggest that you pick up the bone tenderly with your trembling fingers and examine it intently for three to four minutes and then accidentally drop it on the floor. As you go to pick it up place your foot upon it. It is the only one we have in the anatomy school but that is all to the good’.

RETURN TO MANCHESTER At the beginning of 1938 Wood Jones moved to Man- Chester as Professor of Anatomy, where he had been a lecturer 28 years before.

On 21 February 1942 a letter by Wood Jones was published in the British Medical Journul under the heading ‘The Teaching of Anatomy’.22 It was in response to a letter by ‘five teachers of anatomy’ who espoused the view that the teaching of unnecessary minutiae of human structure should be eliminated. Wood Jones’ letter reads:

‘The signatories of the letter on this subject (February 7, p. 196) are probably justified in believing that other teachers will agree with their plea that the study of anatomy should include “general anatomical principles” as well as details of actual structure. It is only when these details have to be ranked as being important, or, alterna- tively, as being merely “unnecessary topographical

718 C H R I STOPH ERS

minutiae”, that difference of opinion is likely to be encountered. Indeed, the writers seem to make the position more difficult by affirming that “the teaching of anatomy, we believe, must cover the whole realm of macroscopic and microscopic structure.” It is legitimate to ask if in this “whole realm” are included those topographical details that some ominiscient individual, or some authoritative body, might from time to time decide to be no more than “unnecessary minutiae”.’

Two weeks later Wood Jones submitted a second letter on this subject to the Journal.23 By chance this letter followed a letter on the same subject by Richard J. A. Berry. Richard Berry had preceded Wood Jones as Pro- fessor of Anatomy in Melbourne and at the time was living in retirement in Bristol.

The second letter was in response to a Mr Wilfred Adams who suggested that a good doctor does not need to know the cranial foramina and what each transmitted. However, later in the letter Mr Adams suggested that an exception be made to the foramen ovale because of its significance in tic douloureux. In his letter Wood Jones pointed out that it was not easy to decide what unnecessary topographical minutiae should be omitted from the teaching of anatomy, and that on the question of the cranial foramina, that it would not be long before some authority put in a plea for the foramen rotundum, and still others might think the stylomastoid foramen worthy of mention. The letter goes on to sav:

~ i ~ . 8. sarnuel E~~~~ Whitnail.

‘With subtractioG from the birden of details of structure piled upon the medical student I am in whole-hearted agreement; but I think that the reformers have not fully appeciated the difficulties involved in the business. More- over, I feel that these difficulties are incapable of solution by correspondence in the medical journals. With addi- tions to the anatomical curriculum I am not concerned here save to support Prof. Lucas Keene’s plea that much useful teaching could be added if the course in biology for medical students concerned itself more with the basic principles of life and less with the details of structure of lower forms’.

Wood Jones remained in Manchester till the end of 1945. While he was in Manchester he received hundreds, perhaps thousands, of food parcels from former students and staff members of the Adelaide and Melbourne Uni- versities. In 1946 he moved to London where he became the first Sir William Collins Professor of Human and Comparative Anatomy and Conservator of the Anatomi- cal Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

SAMUEL ERNEST WHITNALL On 19 February 1950 Wood Jones’ friend and colleague Samuel Ernest Whitnall (Fig. 8) died and Wood Jones wrote his obituary for the Journal of Anatomy.24 In this obituary Wood Jones makes a plea for clarity and intelli- gibility in medical literature and medical teaching, and he recalls that he collaborated with Whitnall in the compilation of the booklet Astonishing Anatomy:25

‘To write of Whitnall the anatomist is to tell only half the story. Medical students know him as the describer of the tubercle on the malar bone to which the lateral

attachment of the tarsal plate is made; for the name “Whitnall’s tubercle” became rapidly incorporated into eponymous anatomical nomenclature. But the older gen- eration of anatomists will remember him - and always be happy in their memories - as “Tingle”. In the guise of Tingle he stands out as the man who had to perfection that gift of typically English humour perpetually en- shrined in the pages of Punch, a journal to the columns of which he made many characteristic contributions. Members of the Anatomical Society who attended the Society’s dinners in the early years of the twentieth century will never forget the anatomist Whitnall who, at the appropriate moment, became Tingle the humorist and incomparable after-dinner entertainer.

Unfortunately, there can be no more than may be counted on the fingers of one hand who remember Tingle the humorist and Whitnall the anatomist, for they collaborated harmoniously in the production, in 1913, of Aston- ishing Anatomy. This was a brochure of 86 pages, illustrated from the price list of the Army Navy Stores and from other highly irrelevant sources. To the relief of one who assisted in its compilation and is still engaged in teaching students, it is a literary curiosity that is now rarely met with. Although Astonishing Anatomy was not a best seller, it was never in danger of being misunder- stood, since it was a typically English piece of foolery. But when Whitnall went to Montreal his particular brand of humour was not so well appreciated, and his little pamphlet entitled The Archirecronies of the Monogamal Oestrous Cycle in the Greater- Pi’ecock (Gallinopunk gigas occidentalis) was regarded in certain academic circles with some disfavour. This publication, which has


no date nor printer’s imprint, was issued in 1932. It consists of 15 pages with humorous illustrations and is written under the pseudonym of “Stodge D. Loquax of the Wishful Destitute of Anatomy. Pah.” A brief quota- tion from the Introduction will make clear the real pur- pose of the author in ridiculing the dodder growth of verbalism that entangles modern scientific writing: “The present prospective preliminary study was made with a view to correlating the standardization of the constructive concepts of our primordial principles permit and then some.” The skit was a salutary one, but it was not understood nor appreciated in its time and place and, judging by some more recent contributions to biological scientific literature, it has failed in its object of killing by ridicule; “the mystification of absolute ignorance and the mystification of fogged science”. Unfortunately, the fog- ging of science by the development of verbal smoke- screens was not arrested by the sarcasm of Butler nor by the humour of Whitnall.’

THE WHIMS OF TEACHERS AND EXAMINERS

Wood Jones retired as the Sir William Collins professor of human and comparative anatomy and as conservator of the Hunterian Museum in 1951 (Fig. 9), but remained a trustee of the Hunterian collection until his death in 1954. In 1952 an article by him was published in the students’ magazine that he once edited, The Londori Hospital Ga:ette, and it was entitled ‘Fifty Years of Fallacies’.26 The whims of teachers and examiners came under his scrutiny and concerning these he wrote:

‘Much outworn dogmatism was still incorporated in the curriculum of the medical student in the 1890s but youth is not greatly given to calling in question the genuineness of the currency of teaching when it is accepted as legal tender by his examiners. If the examiner subscribed to the thesis that most of the ills to which the flesh is heir were due to an excess of uric acid or to a kink in the intestinal canal or to a caudal displacement of the liver or kidneys, it was best that the student should share his credulity. The progress of thought in medicine and surgery during the past half century is marked by the bleaching bones of theories that have perished by the wayside. These skeletons we will not disturb.’

STUDENTS VISIT HIS HOME Throughout his teaching career it was Wood Jones’ custom to have students visit his home. That custom may well have been derived from his teacher and mentor Arthur Keith. That custom they shared was perhaps related to the fact that neither had children of their own. Soon after Wood Jones’ marriage to Gertrude Clunies- Ross they purchased a house in Epsom which overlooked the Epsom race course. On race days they kept open house for students who cared to come. That practice continued in Australia, both in Adelaide and Melbourne.

In his University of Melbourne Medical Society Lec- ture of 1990, Sydney Sunderland recalled that ‘Wood Jones had open house on a Wednesday evening for his

Fig. 9. Wood Jones when at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

prosectors . . . 1 never missed one . . . I met artists; I met there Jorgensen of the Meldrum School. 1 met musicians, writers [and] Percy Leason the great cartoonist’.”

THE INTENSE THOROUGHNESS OF HIS TEACHING

The definitive appraisal of Wood Jones’ life and of his abilities as a teacher appeared in The Medical Journal of Austr~ulia on 27 November 1954 soon after his death.27 It was an appraisal completely void of the influence of the green eyed goddess. It was the result of the collaboration of two of his students, Professor S. Sunderland (later Sir Sydney Sunderland) and Associate Professor K. F. Rus- sell (later Professor K. F. Russell). In the last paragraph of this appraisal, Sunderland and Russell wrote of their account of his career that it would do little to enable those who did not come under the spell of his unique personal- ity to picture his outstanding characteristics. They went on to write that:

‘He was possessed of a restless curiosity, was never repressed in expression, nor did he ever sit on the fence; he was always writing and saying something unusual and was always a little apart from the herd. But those whose good fortune it was to know him need no reminders. By the intense thoroughness of his teaching, by the philo- sophical breadth of his outlook and by his own personal character he wielded an immeasurable influence on many

120 CHR ISTOPHERS

hundreds of medical graduates and students in this country and abroad; and everywhere he was regarded with admiration, esteem and affection.'

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank the following publishers for permission to reproduce material from books and articles by Frederic Wood Jones: Edward Arnold; Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner; Churchill and the Cambridge Univervity Press. Acknowledgement is also due to the Adelaide Medical Student's Society, The Lancet, the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, The Medical Journal of Australia (Copyright 0 The Medical Journal of Australia 1972; 2: 325-9, reprinted with permission. Copyright 0 The Medical Journal of AUS- tralia 1954; 2: 877), The British Medical Journal, The University of Melbourne and The Royal London Hospital Archives and Museum for permission to publish material from their journals. The Royal College of Surgeons of England and The University of Adelaide readily granted permission to use material from their library and for that the author is most grateful. The author is obliged to Dr Peter Last of Adelaide for permission to make use of material he supplied concerning his father Raymond Last. The author would also like to thank Mrs Sally Hellwege for her assistance.

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REFERENCES Wood Jones F. Some incidents in the life of a famous surgeon. The Loridon Hospital Gazette 1902; 8: 155-7. Wood Jones F. A bygone anatomist of St Thomas's. Johannis Browne. St Thomas's Hospital Cu:ettr 191 I ; 21:

Wood Jones F. A bygone anatomist of St Thomas's: Thomas Wharton. St Thonlas's Hospital Gazette 191 1 ; 21: 109-12. Wood Jones F. A bygone anatomist of St Thomas's: William Cheselden. St Thomas's Hospital Gazette 191 I ;

Wood Jones F. Anatomy and the medical student. The (Adelaide) Medical StudeIit's Society Re\iew 1920; 11:

Wood Jones F. A necrology of anatomists. The (Adelaide) Medical Student's Society Review 192 I ; 12: 2 1-4. Wood Jones F. Man's Place among the Mammals. London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1929.

55-61.

21: 171-5.

22-6.

8. Wood Jones F. Doctors iu Shirt Slee\*e.s, edited by H. Bashford. London: Kegan Paul, Trench. Trubner & Co. Ltd, 1939.

9. Kilner TP. Original letter held by Dr B. E. Christophers, 1960.

10. Learoyd CG. The master. Lawet 1954; i i , 813. I I . Ingleby H. Original letter held by Dr B. E. Christophers.

1960. 12. Wood Jones F. Arboi.eal Moii. London: Edward Arnold,

1916. 13. Wood Jones F. The Pririciples i# Ailatomy as Seeri i r i the

Harid. London: J & A Churchill. 1920. 14. Schedule [to the] Deed dated 25 October 1989 between

Raymond Jack Last 'Professor Last' and The University of Adelaide 'the University'.

15. Wood Jones F. Employment of external examiners, 1922. Original manuscript held in the archives section of the Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide.

16. Wood Jones F. Letter to Ulrica Hubbe. 1926, lodged in the Wood Jones' Collection in the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

17. Wood Jones F. Letter to A. Keith. 1926, lodged in the Wood Jones' Collection in the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

18. Wood Jones F. Letter to Ulrica Hubbe, 1929, lodged in the Wood Jones' Collection in the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

19. Sunderland S. The Melbourne Medical School and Some of its 'Characters' I93 1 - 1975. C h i r m (Journal of the University of Melbourne Medical Society) 1992; 2: 45-52.

20. Guest JS. 1989 Vicary Lecture. John Hunter's disciple: Frederic Wood Jones, Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

2 I . Christophers BE. Frederic Wood Jones. The Medical J o w - iial r f A u s t r d i a 1972; 2: 327.

22. Wood Jones F. The teaching of anatomy. The British Medical Jortr.iial 1942; 1: 27 I .

23. Wood Jones F. The teaching of anatomy. The British Merlical Jouriiul 1942; 1: 368.

24. Wood Jones F. Samuel Ernest Whitnall, MA, MD, BCh(0xon). MRCS, LRCP(Lond). In Memoriam. Jour.na1 oj'Aiiatomy 1950; 84: 395-6.

25. 'Tingle'. Astouishing Anatonr.v. London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons Ltd, 1913.

26. Wood Jones F. Fifty years of fallacies. The Loridon Hospi- tal Ga-ette 1952; 55: 1 17.

27. Sunderland S. Russell KF. Obituary: Frederic Wood Jones. The Medical .lourrial of Australia 1954; 2: 879.

Documents

FREDERIC WOOD JONES AS A TEACHER AND ON TEACHING