Sydney Fancourt McDonald (1885-1947), paediatrician, physician and doctor-soldier, was born at ‘Lumeah’, Rocklea in Brisbane on 18 November 1885, the youngest of eight children. He was the son of George Thomas McDonald (1836-1915) a Scottish surveyor and of Amelia Margaret McDonald (1845-1940) daughter of Sir William Mitchell. From a scholarly and artistic family, Sydney Fancourt McDonald was educated at the Normal School (Brisbane) and at the Brisbane Grammar School, and then studied medicine at the University of Melbourne. As an undergraduate, he was resident (and prominent in student affairs) at Trinity College within the University of Melbourne (1904-10). After graduation, he was a resident doctor with staff appointments at the Queen’s Memorial Infectious Hospital, and the Alfred Hospital. He served as assistant senior resident surgeon at the Children’s Hospital Melbourne (1912-14), and undertook postgraduate studies as a resident medical officer at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in London (1914). He obtained his doctorate in medicine from the University of Melbourne (1913), in diseases of children and in neurology, and was awarded the Membership of the Royal College of Physicians of London (by examination) in 1919.

In 1910, as major, he was appointed as first Officer Commanding, Melbourne University Rifles (later the Melbourne University Regiment). He commanded the Melbourne University Rifles until 1914 when, after arrival in London he enlisted on 4 August 1914 in the Royal Army Medical Corps at Woolwich (London) and was posted to 4 (British) General Hospital. He was mentioned in dispatches (1 January 1916), and served with 4 General Hospital, 33 CCS, 51 CCS, and 46 Stationary Hospital. He returned to civilian practice in Australia, acted as a medical examiner to the Air Force, and in 1937 was commissioned as a wing commander (RAAF), and in 1941 was promoted to group captain in the medical branch. He was the Jackson Orator (1940) at the British Medical Association (Queensland branch), and delivered the oration ‘Some debts of medicine to the fighting services’ (Med J Aust, 1940, 2, 589).

Sydney Fancourt McDonald was one of the leading paediatricians in Queensland for a quarter of a century (1920-47). He was appointed as outpatient physician to the Hospital for Sick Children in Brisbane in 1920, and in 1923 the senior inpatient physician. He remained the senior paediatrician in Queensland until his retirement in 1946. During this period he was secretary to the Hospital Clinical Society, became a councillor of the BMA (Queensland branch) in 1923, and its president in 1930. He served on numerous committees of the BMA from 1920. In 1928 he was elected a councillor of the Medical Defence Society of Queensland. In 1934, he was the president of the section of paediatrics at the Ninth Australasian Medical Congress, in Hobart. In 1938, he was created a foundation Fellow of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians, for his services to paediatrics. He was an indefatigable writer. His principal contributions to medical knowledge were in the field of clinical paediatrics, with particular emphasis on differential diagnosis and the natural history of certain childhood disorders. He wrote major papers on nephritis, lead poisoning in children, poliomyelitis and pink disease.

As a general physician he had a particular interest in, and commitment to, the medical problems of returned servicemen, undoubtedly reflecting his earlier experiences with the RAMC in World War I. He was appointed physician to Rosemount Repatriation Hospital (1923), chief examiner for the Department of Civil Aviation in Queensland (1928), medical director of the Queensland board of the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society (1931). He served as consultant physician at Greenslopes Repatriation Hospital from 1940 to 1947. He was invited as the Stawell Orator (Melbourne) in 1943, delivering the oration ‘The mosquito - a teacher of medicine’ (Med J Aust, 1943, 2, 513). He had a particular interest in, and sympathy for, ex-servicemen suffering from neuroses. He wrote extensively about anxiety neurosis and nephritis and wrote major papers on the problems of the pensioner, and on nervous and neurological disorders of service personnel. He was the first Queensland doctor to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London (1940), and probably the first Australian paediatrician to be so honoured.

In 1925 he became a foundation member of the Postgraduate Committee of the BMA (Queensland branch) and was its first formal chairman, remaining in this position for seventeen years (1930-47). In 1938 he was the first clinical lecturer in paediatrics to be appointed by the newly formed (in 1936) faculty of medicine within the University of Queensland. In 1944 he was appointed to the faculty board of the University of Queensland, and in 1946 became chairman of the advisory committee on paediatric studies, an important committee of the board of the faculty of medicine within the University of Queensland.

Sydney Fancourt McDonald was a tall powerful figure, yet with a diffident, very formal but shy and intellectual demeanour. He was universally recalled as a person who was ‘very proper, very correct and formal, who lived his professional life in the tradition of the highest ideals of clinical medicine’. He married Marjorie Peck in 1916, and after her death in 1939, married Jean Darville (1942). From 1927 he lived in Craigston in Brisbane, the first strata-title building encompassing professional doctors’ suites in Queensland, of which he was a founding director. He had a great love of photography and left many clinical photographs, and many scenes of town and marine life in Queensland. He died at his home on 8 August 1947, and was afforded a funeral with full military honours at St John’s Cathedral in Brisbane, prior to his cremation. His portrait hangs in the lecture theatre, within the department of child health in the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane.