Harry Garlick was born in Cranbourne, Victoria, son of RC Garlick. After attending rural schools, he was successful in gaining entry to Melbourne Boys High School, which was regarded at that time as the State’s premier boys’ high school. He matriculated with honours in 1934. This initial academic success marked him as a young man possessing well above average scholastic ability.

Garlick entered the University of Melbourne medical school in 1936 and gained honours in most subjects throughout the course. He graduated in 1941 with honours in medicine and surgery. Because of the war he, like most of his contemporaries, had an abbreviated internship which was spent at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

After basic military training, he was posted to New Guinea with the 13th Field Regiment. While in New Guinea he was seen to show an interest in surgery and was sent back to Australia in 1944 to the surgical division of the Brisbane military hospital. After a brief stay learning military surgery, he was sent as OC of an advanced surgical team in New Britain. This was his final encounter with surgery.

Like many of his contemporaries, Harry Garlick was all too aware of deficiencies in his formal post-graduate training and felt it necessary to spend a further two resident/registrar years at the Royal Melbourne and The Royal Children’s Hospitals. By then he felt he was ready to participate in higher medical training.

His first encounter with academic medicine, which in Melbourne in the late 1940’s was not highly developed, was as a Fellow in the Clinical Research Unit at the Royal Melbourne Hospital under the guidance of Dr Ian Wood (qv 2), and then as a student supervisor for the University of Melbourne. During that time he gained his MD from the University of Melbourne and his Membership of the RACP.

Holding the Membership and the MD should have been sufficient to enter practice as a specialist physician. However, many of his generation with similar qualifications felt the need to gain additional experience by undertaking overseas training. This meant a pilgrimage to London to take out the Membership of the London College and to rub shoulders with famous colleagues. Harry spent more than a year as a postgraduate scholar in the Department of Medicine at the London Hospital and gained in wisdom distilled by leading London consultants at the time. By that time Harry Garlick was a mature physician who could practise in all branches of internal medicine. His special interest was in gastroenterology, which he maintained for the rest of life.

On return to Melbourne he was appointed as a physician to Prince Henry’s Hospital, which had just become a teaching hospital of the University of Melbourne and was now home to a small number of medical students. From the time of his appointment he became very much involved in the welfare of students and in the development of teaching facilities. He was an excellent bedside teacher and was sub-Dean of the clinical school for nine years and Dean for another three. Harry Garlick played a critical role in promoting the affiliation of Prince Henry’s Hospital with Monash University. In 1968 he was appointed as a Professor in the Department of Medicine at Monash. These few lines really do not do justice to the important role Harry Garlick played in helping the union of Prince Henry’s with the ‘instant’ medical school created by Monash University. As a physician his opinion was widely sought and he was regarded by many as a physician’s physician.

Although his commitments to Prince Henry’s and Monash University were substantial, they were but only a part of the service he gave to Medicine. He was a member of the Medical Board of Victoria for 22 years and deputy President for 10. He served on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for 6 years and was a member of the Board of Management of Prince Henry’s Hospital for 16 years.

Harry Garlick was very much involved in the affairs of the Australian Medical Association, as a member of the Victorian Branch Council for 12 years, the Federal Council and was President of the Victorian Branch in 1971 when he was made a Fellow of the AMA.

For a person such as Harry Garlick an association with the College was inevitable. He was elected as a member councillor in 1955 for two years and returned as an elected councillor for a further period from 1963 until 1975. He was a member of the Victorian State Committee for 20 years and was its Chairman for two of these. It is easy to see why he was chosen to be one of the first recipients of a College medal in 1984 for outstanding service to the College.

Despite these many commitments Harry Garlick continued to maintain a busy practice as a consultant physician. His opinion was widely sought and he enjoyed the pure delights of diagnosis. He had an extraordinary memory and delighted in using some of his interesting cases as illustrative teaching exercises.

While at the University he played A-grade lacrosse both with the University and the Melbourne High School Old Boys. He did not return to this vigorous game when he once again had time to play sport. Golf was his choice and he paid the same meticulous attention to golf as he did to anything else he undertook. In the last 10-15 years or more when his final illness kept him from more robust pursuits, his most notable achievement, which gave him so much pleasure, was his woodwork shop. He produced some elegant pieces of furniture for his daughters and friends and was continuing to do so until a few weeks before he died. He and Sue would retire for a three or a four-day weekend to their most comfortable seaside home on the cliffs at Anglesea. It was all that she could do to persuade him to come for meals, so engrossed was he in the intricacies of the chair or table that he was making. Throughout all these months of his painful illness he never complained.

Harry Garlick married twice and had three daughters by his first wife, Dr Winifred Champion. His second wife was Susan Gunn.