BLOOD AND GUTS

ed November 4, 1872, is headlined, “Mysterious Occurence.’

A man of around 25 years of age has been found, “lying in a pool of blood at 70 Old Wynd.’ He is taken to Macewen’s rooms but expires minutes after arrival. He is found to have a fractured skull and, ‘a portion of the scalp had been torn off.’

Later, police find a reefing jacket, a cap and a handkerchief stained with blood behind a cart in the court. However, no witnesses can be found.’It was denied by neighbours that any disturbance had taken place.’

After he left the post, Macewen went on to lead a number of major medical innovations, for which he was knighted. He was a pioneer in modern brain surgery and contributed to the development of bone graft surgery and pneumonectomy (removal of the lungs).

An amputation set belonging to the surgeon is held in the college’s collection as is a wooden table where he performed procedures to help children affected by rickets. He developed the first instruments to treat the condition.

Macewen was taught by the better known, Joseph Lister, the pioneer of antiseptic surgery, however he took this further with the sterilisation of all equipment used in surgery and even designed his own instruments, made with one continuous part and no joins to minimise germs.

A portrait of Macewen towards the end of his career, hangs in the Royal College, where he would have regaled his peers with his medical successes and failures. He died in 1924, by which time he had gained world-wide acclaim.

He was one of the first surgeons to pinpoint and remove a brain tumour in a young girl of 14 with- out the help of X-Rays or CT scans.Ross says.

“Bone surgery, surgery of the lung, Macewen was an innovator in all of those fields,” Ross says.

“At that time a lot of surgeons steered clear of the lung. It was seen as an out of bounds area. He was keen to explore and found you could safely operate on it.

“Antiseptic surgery had started in the decade before through Joseph Lister. He picked up on this and took it a a stage further to aseptic surgery which is much closer to what we have now where every item that is used is cleaned and instruments are made of one piece of metal. He brought in boiled white gowns, which was unusual at the time.

“The list of innovations he was involved in are incredible.”

Visitors can view the collection by appointment by contacting ross.mcgregor@rcpsg.ac.uk