James Gordon Hislop was born in Windsor, Victoria, the son of a pharmacist, James Mitchell Hislop and his wife Katherine (nee Collins). His parents sent him to Scotch College and Melbourne University where he graduated MB BS in 1918. He immediately became immersed in treating the influenza pandemic in Victoria and Tasmania. He took charge of a school in Hobart as an emergency hospital with zeal and probable glee, since he recalled it sixty years later in his valedictory address to the Legislative Council of Western Australia.

The emerging Perth Children’s Hospital was his next step. He is remembered there as a long and lanky resident, deadly serious about his future career. He continued his postgraduate training in Europe and returned to become medical superintendent at the Perth Children’s Hospital. He married a Victorian, Netta Searll, in 1925 and settled in Western Australia. Hislop became honorary physician at the Perth Public Hospital and also at Fremantle Hospital and developed a distinguished private practice with interests in chest disease and endocrinology.

He was a vital force in stimulating the Australian Medical Association and the University of Western Australia to develop postgraduate medical education in a city where undergraduate training was not yet available. He took a leading part in promoting a medical school, financed by public subscription. With his three hats of ex-district governor of Rotary, MLC, and leading physician he was a key link in that outstanding fund-raising activity. He became life governor of the Australian Postgraduate Federation in Medicine in 1959.

His community service was considerable. During the War he headed the Civil Defence Council in Western Australia and was executive and emergency director of the State Medical Co-ordinating Committee from 1942 to 1946. In peacetime he became a district governor in Rotary and went on to become south-eastern representative at Rotary International in the United States 1947 to 1949. From 1941 when he was elected to the Legislative Council he moved into worker’s compensation, poliomyelitis prevention, pasteurisation of milk, and the training of paramedical workers.

‘Gordy’, as he was known to friends, was flamboyant and dramatic in both medical and parliamentary activities. Measured meandering sentences with dramatic pauses, and intense searching for his patients’ needs, failings, pleasures, and tragedies characterised his ward rounds. A young registrar described him as a Roman emperor in meticulous pin-stripe. Colleagues in parliament and citizens flocked to him. He was dedicated to them and his work as legislative councillor was carried out after midnight so they were not neglected.

As the ‘Doctor in the House’ his speech in reply in 1948 illustrated the accuracy of his foresight on medical practice in the far-flung state of Western Australia and the Royal Perth Hospital development that was then in the conception phase. He read prolifically. He was a lover of photography, golf and bowls and the meals that followed. He and Netta had a daughter, Joan and a son Ian Gordon, Fellow of the College.

His latter years were marred by the controversy, media stimulated, surrounding a liberalising abortion bill which was never passed. His obsession with the conditions of men and women at this stage was unfortunately remembered more than the earlier public health triumphs, as, Caesar-like, he looked for the political laurels of a medical achievement. His positive political accomplishments were a lesson for beleaguered doctors two decades later who spurned the political scene only to have a clash with politicians head-on.