Surgeon celebrates his 100th birthday

Durham Smith AO, MB BS, MD, MS, FRACS, FACS

Born in May 1922, Edward Durham Smith, ex-president of the RACS from 1987 – 1989, recently celebrated his 100th birthday. He was born in Sunderland, the port city close to the cathedral city of Durham in northern England to Australian parents. In 1922 his father, an Anglican minister, was undertaking post-graduate studies at Durham University, and the name ‘Durham’ was suggested by the attending nurse at his delivery. The family returned to Australia when Durham was a few months old.

Durham did his schooling in Terang, in the western district of Victoria, with the last four years on a scholarship to Melbourne Grammar School.

“I had a happy childhood; I just had no sense of boredom during that time,” Durham says. “There were lots of things to do—roller skating, fishing in the local creek, swimming nude in the lakes, and all the usual things that boys did.” Leaving school in 1940, he intended to study medicine, but was interrupted by the army service in WWII. He completed his MBBS from Melbourne University in 1948. Durham describes the 20 years from 1940 to 1960 as “decidedly a mess”. After interning for a year at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, in 1949 his career was again interrupted as he contracted tuberculosis (TB)—a common illness at the time among residents and nurses. “‘You need an easy job for a couple of years just to let things consolidate,’ I was told, so I spent those two years in sanitoria work looking after TB patients,” Durham says. “I felt perfectly well by that stage; and indeed, not only feeling well but bored to tears because the job took about two hours a day. That changed my career because I didn’t do very well in the course, it was interrupted, and I went back to studies and completed all my surgical training at The Alfred Hospital in general surgery. I got my Fellowship in 1956.” On recovery, surgical training occupied the next decade—a year at the University Anatomy Department, a return to the Alfred as surgical registrar, completing a General Surgery FRACS in 1956, and postFellowship training in both Neurosurgery and Paediatric Surgery at the Alfred and Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH). Durham went overseas in 1959, with Fellowship privileges at the Hospital for Sick Children in London and at the Children’s Medical Centre at Harvard in Boston, USA. From 1961 he confined his career to Paediatric surgery, both in public and in private practice. He continued as surgeon in the children’s ward at the Alfred Hospital for nine years, with staff appointments at the RCH until 1987. Durham conducted research sessions at the RCH, together with clinical work, in genito-urology, hypospadias, neurogenic bladder, and anorectal pathology. He also authored and co-authored several books—Spina Bifida, Anorectal anomalies, and Congenital Anomalies of the Urinary and Genital Tracts, the latter with John Hutson as editor for the second edition.

During his career he held honorary appointments at the Royal Women’s Hospital and Mercy Maternity Hospital, which gave him access to babies with anomalies, both in life and at autopsy. Sixteen years after acquiring his FRACS diploma, Durham began a 24-year long close association with the College. In 1972 he was elected to the Victorian State Committee and was appointed as an examiner for the FRACS in Paediatric surgery—an appointment he held for 11 years. In 1978, Durham was elected to the RACS Council. Appointments those days were for four years, with a maximum re-appointment duration of 12 years. He served as the chair of the Court of Examiners for four years, chairman of the Board of Paediatric Surgery,