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College Roll Bio
Clarke, James Eric
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Qualifications
MB BS Melb (1934) MD Melb (1937) MRCP (1939) MRACP (1944) FRACP (1951) FRCP (1958)
Born
23/05/1911
Died
02/04/1995
Eric Clarke was born the son of missionary parents in Kuling, China. He received his schooling in Melbourne at Caulfield Grammar School and Scotch College, earning a Senior State Scholarship and a residential scholarship to Ormond College. These enabled him to enter the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Melbourne where he graduated MB BS with first class honours in all final subjects. After a year as RMO at The Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1935, he spent two years as senior RMO in Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital, which no doubt kindled his abiding interest in tuberculosis, and then went to London in 1939 to work as house physician in the Brompton Hospital. From 1940 to 1946 he served in the Australian Imperial Forces in the Middle East and Southwest Pacific theatres, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, Officer Commanding in the Medical Division. After demobilisation he was appointed honorary physician to inpatients at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, a post he held from 1947 to 1971. In the same period he continued to serve his former comrades as VMO to Repatriation General Hospital Heidelberg, as physician to the Repatriation Department and as member of its central advisory committee. He also became consultant to the Tuberculosis Service of the State Department of Public Health, and resumed his Army service in the voluntary reserve as colonel (consultant physician) to headquarters from 1960 to 1970.
During his time at the Alfred Hospital he was Clinical Dean from 1961 to 1970, was elected chairman of the senior medical staff, and represented it as member of faculty at both Melbourne and Monash Universities. Outside the hospital he also served the RACP on several committees, as member of Council for many years, the Board of Censors from 1954 to 1963, and Vice President from 1966 to 1968. He contributed much to the Thoracic Society of Australia, becoming President from 1970 to 1972. In 1955, he stood down from his hospital and consulting practice for a year to assist Professor Richard Lovell, newly arrived from London, in the establishment at the Royal Melbourne Hospital of the just inaugurated James Stewart Chair of Medicine in the University of Melbourne.
A similar record of his exceptional service to profession and community will inevitably reappear with great frequency in the annals of the College. It will be, moreover, necessarily compressed and a rather bloodless picture of the man himself. In the distant future, when time has destroyed the sense of personal continuity and outstanding original contributions have been obscured by further advances, readers and students of the Roll might nevertheless wish to gain some insight into the character of their predecessors, perhaps to discern their abiding influences, or even to seek from studies of the past solutions for their current perplexities.
Thoughts of this kind have prompted me to present a more personal appreciation of Eric Clarke in terms of his professional achievements, and of the qualities that lay behind them. His life was guided by deep religious convictions. These were expressed in a deep concern for the unfortunate, which was never critical of others’ lapses in acceptable behaviour, and in an unfailing generosity of spirit and tolerance of other beliefs, and were the ultimate source of his devotion to his profession. He was exceptionally free from a desire for approbation in anything he did. He failed to collect his numerous service medals, and his many benevolent activities inside and outside the profession were little known before his death. This natural modesty also extended to his sporting ability. The rueful comments of a younger consultant who without forewarning brashly challenged him in tennis would aptly paraphrase the qualities he brought to bear as a physician: “rather silent but very polished – tremendous concentration and dexterity – beautifully executed smashes – angled volleys, and when the occasion arose, bullet-like winning drives.”
Eric Clarke was held in the highest respect not only by his peers in medicine but also those in surgical and other disciplines, and by his juniors; both as a specialist in his chosen field of pulmonary diseases, and as a consultant physician, especially in multidisciplinary or obscure problems of diagnosis. His lack of any flamboyance or personal conceits made a striking contrast with his clinical prowess, which coupled a remarkable intellectual capacity, breadth of reading, experience and a relentlessly logical analysis with the rigorous and critical application of clinical skills. As a former junior resident destined to distinction as an anaesthetist recently put it, one learned from him to appreciate the value of simple observation, to study the figures on the bed before reading the figures on the paper, to be concerned with facts rather than impressions, and above all to be honest with oneself as well as one’s patients and colleagues.
Whether by inclination, or the loss of time in orthodox early graduate development imposed on his generation by service in war, Eric Clarke spent little time in formal research and published very little though always fully informed in scientific and technical advances. He did, however, make numerous original observations of clinical value in his special area which were passed on to those associated with him and in some instances later vindicated independently by the systematic research of others. Perhaps the most telling appreciation of his exceptional qualities as a physician lay in the fact that his residency and other junior posts were keenly sought by recent graduates whether their intentions were to train as physicians, as family doctors in remote areas or as specialists in other fields. Those of us who were fortunate enough to share this experience have already seen, through times of rapid technical change in medicine, the durability of the precepts he inculcated in us, and have ensured in turn their passing on. At a time when the pressure to publish has become an imperative, it is salutary to reflect that influences of this kind might be as powerful, as important and as lasting as the published word.
Author
JRE FRASER
References
This is a modified version of the entry in Munk’s Roll X 66-7
Last Updated
May 30, 2018, 17:38 PM
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