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College Roll Bio
Hayden, John Gerald
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Qualifications
CBE (1945) ED MB BS Melb (1923) MD Melb (1925) MRCP (1927) FRACP (1938) (Foundation) FRCP (1941) PRACP (1958-60)
Born
03/04/1901
Died
26/12/1960
John Gerald Hayden was born in Ballarat in 1901, the eldest of six children. When he was only eleven years old his father died, and his mother had no parents, nor brothers or sisters to support her in the care of this young family. There is no doubt that the remarkable response that the young John made to the responsibilities which rested upon him as a result of this tragedy did a great deal to mould his character and provide the strength of personality which was so clearly revealed when he came to manhood. Happily his mother had the joy of living to see all her children make successful careers in different walks of life.
From St Patrick’s College, Ballarat, where he was dux of the school, John Hayden won a scholarship to Newman College in the University of Melbourne, being therefore a foundation student of the College which had only recently been completed. He had a distinguished undergraduate career, finishing third in a year which was much larger than usual because it contained so many individuals whose entry into the medical course had been delayed by service in the Armed Forces during World War I. After graduation he became a resident medical officer at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne and this appointment marked the beginning of long and devoted service to the Hospital.
Entering into postgraduate training he took a Doctorate of Medicine in obstetrics in Melbourne, went to St Louis, USA, where he worked with Evarts Graham, and afterwards to England to obtain his Membership of the Royal College of Physicians of London. Back in Australia in 1928, at the age of twenty-seven years, he began private practice as a consulting physician and was appointed outpatient physician to St Vincent’s Hospital, being promoted to the rank of inpatient physician in 1934.
The Association of Physicians was formed in Australia in 1930 and this gave birth in 1938 to The Royal Australasian College of Physicians, of which John Hayden was a foundation Fellow. The Royal College of Physicians, London, had been founded in 1518 by Letters Patent granted by Henry VIII ‘with a view to the improvement and more orderly exercise of the art of Physic, and the repression of irregular, unlearned and incompetent practitioners’. It was the persuasion and advice of Henry’s Chancellor, Cardinal Wolseley, and the famous priest-physician Thomas Linacre which were responsible for the foundation of the Royal College of Physicians in London, and there is no doubt that there were similar ideals in the minds and hearts of the physicians that founded the Australasian College.
He was a member of the first council and remained a councillor until his untimely death. The following extract from a special council minute of 27 April, 1961, records the council’s appreciation of his service to the College:
He was a member of the council of the Association of Physicians of Australasia just prior to the formation of the College in 1938. He became a member of the first council of the College being its youngest member at the time. With Dr Stewart Osburn Cowen who became the first censor-in-chief, he was engaged along with the solicitor of the College, the late Mr Harold Walker of Melbourne, in drafting the Memorandum and Articles of Association of the College. These were based largely on the patterns of the constitution of the College of Physicians of London, the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. That this work was excellently done is shown by the small number of amendments to our constitution which time has proved necessary.
In 1940 he was appointed by the council as a censor of the College on the recommendation of Stewart Cowen who on many occasions spoke with admiration and appreciation of the knowledge, judgement and capacity of this physician. He held this position until 1951. From 1952 to 1954 he was a vice-president of the College. In 1958 he succeeded to the highest position of the College and although ill at the time saw out his full term of two years as president. He was a member of the executive committee from 1952 to 1956 and again when he was president from 1958 to 1960. In short, he was an active spirit in the deliberations of the council from the inception of the College to the time of his death, except for the period from 1940 to 1945 when he served in the Australian Imperial Force.
At the outbreak of World War II he went to the Middle East as OC Medical Division of the 2/7 Australian General Hospital and later became commander of this same unit in Egypt and in Papua-New Guinea. For his service in the Middle East he was created a Companion of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
In 1956 John Hayden was invited by the University of Melbourne to fill the chair of the department of medicine established by the University of Melbourne at St Vincent’s Hospital. Over all these years his eminence as a consultant and as a teacher of medicine continued to grow. Many of those who had been undergraduate students at St Vincent’s welcomed the opportunity to come back to his ward rounds when they themselves began their postgraduate studies of internal medicine. Here they were joined by postgraduate students not only from other clinical schools in Melbourne, but students also from other states and even from other countries who would take every opportunity to observe him at work and to listen to his encyclopaedic yet always practical dissertations on the clinical problems.
He married in 1929. The marriage came to a tragic end in 1947 with the death of his wife who had been for some time in poor health. He bore his sorrow bravely and with great dignity. In 1953 he married again. His second wife, Patricia Bell, was a great support to him. They had a son not long before his death, and he was survived by his widow, their infant son and an adopted daughter of his first marriage.
It was the courage and serenity that he displayed during his final illness that so eloquently revealed the greatness of John Hayden. His deep religious faith had always given him a marvellous dignity and provided a wonderful depth and balance to all his talents.
Author
JJ BILLINGS
References
Munk’s Roll
,
5
, 180;
Br Med J
, 1961,
1
, 508;
Lancet
, 1961,
1
, 516;
Med J Aust
, 1961,
1
, 572-4;
The Melbourne School of Pathology
, Melb, 1962, 65;
Age
, Melb, 27 Dec 1960;
Last Updated
May 30, 2018, 17:37 PM
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