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College Roll Bio
Mills, Roy Markham
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Qualifications
AM (1984) MB BS Syd (1939) MRACP (1950) FRACP (1971) Hon MD Newcastle (1991)
Born
28/04/1917
Died
04/11/2000
Roy Markham Mills was certainly one of the most distinguished physicians ever to practice in the Hunter Valley but also one held in high regard throughout the Commonwealth. Born on 28 April 1917 at Denman NSW, the elder son of Coles Markham Mills and Jessie Lorna (nee McKenzie) he died of respiratory failure in Toronto NSW on 4th November 2000 after a long illness, with his mind, brilliant and oriented to a lateral mode of thought, intact virtually to the end. His father was manager of the Denman Butter Factory and he grew up closely associated with the Hunter Valley and its people and with a love of sport, especially cricket. As a schoolboy he regularly rode a pushbike from Denman to Muswellbrook to play cricket. From Maitland High School he gained an Exhibition Scholarship to Sydney University to study Medicine.
He graduated in 1939 and had a brief internship at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Sydney, prior to enlistment, as Captain in the 2/10 Field Ambulance. He married Eirene Winifred Plumbe on 28 March 1941 shortly before his Unit went with the 8th Division to Malaya and four months later, to war. During hostilities he was twice injured, once by shrapnel and then by blast injury to which he later attributed an impaired respiratory reserve, although photographs of him before the war showed a strapping six-footer of fine physique. Twice mentioned in dispatches he was recommended for a Military Cross and in 1943 he was the sole medical officer with 718 men on a working party to build part of the infamous Burma-Thailand Railway. When cholera broke out he taught his orderlies how to do cut-downs and insert the bamboo needles he had devised to administer saline made from salt and rainwater. By treating tropical ulcers medically, he was able to avoid amputation. By war’s end he was ill with pulmonary tuberculosis requiring a prolonged stay in RGH Concord.
From 1947 he worked at the hospital and passed the MRACP examination in 1950, whereupon he was offered honorary appointments at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney Hospital and St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney. These he declined, choosing to research the natural history of childhood tuberculosis working in the department of the late Sir Lorimer Dods (qv 2) in the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Sydney. Having established the benefit of BCG vaccination for children, he sought a full time appointment in the Chest Department at the Royal Newcastle Hospital headed by Dr Ethel Byrne in 1953. By 1955 he was busy clinically, not only with management of the abnormals in the initial Mass Miniature Radiography but utilizing his knowledge and lateral thinking to question the value of community-wide screening; he took the view that the procedure was least likely to be taken up by those needing it most – the alcoholics and the marginalised. In 1955 he also ceased recommending surgery for pulmonary tuberculosis in favour of intensive chemotherapy. These views led to bitter opposition from the then thoracic establishment. He placed great emphasis on the rehabilitation of tuberculous patients and set up a comprehensive rehabilitation program with a sheltered workshop as a bridge between hospital and work in the community. Increasingly he emphasised the need for intensive chemotherapy and with a growing recognition of poor patient compliance developed comprehensive supervised chemotherapy.
On the Burma-Thailand Railway he had kept detailed medical records of the troops and learned the benefit of good records. In Newcastle he sought advice from the developing data processing industry, which he applied to the tuberculous patients’ records and by 1968 he had a database of 2012 records to identify the natural history of his patients. He showed the benefit of chemotherapy, the diminished significance of cavitation, the importance of nutrition and that with appropriate supervised chemotherapy, break down was virtually unknown.
By 1966 he had decided he was falling behind academically, having devoted so much energy into developing the Chest Unit. So he set out with his wife and daughter on a self funded year long sabbatical in Europe and the US. This was a time of major developments in pulmonary function testing and blood gas analysis and upon his return he set up the Respiratory Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Newcastle Hospital with Dr Owen James whom he recruited from the US and Dr Murree Allen (qv2). Pioneering work and evaluation of the results of the treatment of respiratory failure especially in chest injury and drug overdose was sufficient for Dr James to gain his MS and the Unit achieved high regard. He was now more involved in the broader fields of post graduate education and the Hunter Post Graduate Medical Institute and the Hunter and Northern Society of Physicians certainly owed much of their genesis to him.
In 1972 he transferred to the visiting staff of Royal Newcastle Hospital but continued on the arduous Respiratory Unit roster. By now moves were being made for a medical school and he played a major role in the successful submission to the Carmel Committee.
From 1974-8 he was a member of the NSW State Committee of the RACP. He was President of the Thoracic Society of Australia 1977-79, a measure of the high regard he was now held in by his peers, augmented by receipt of the Society’s Gold Medal in 1993. In 1984 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia and in 1991 received an honorary MD from Newcastle University for his contributions.
Throughout all this he remained a deeply caring physician with a prodigious memory for patients and their problems, a source of sage advice to all who sought it and a deeply committed Anglican.
Less well known were the scars he bore from his POW days; for ever after he awoke at 5.30 am awaiting the clock to enable him to telephone someone about a new insight he had gained in his meditations. During his time on the railway he had secretly kept a diary, which he brought back to Australia and gave to the Australian War Memorial but it was lost until 1988. This formed the basis of his book Doctor’s Diary and Memoirs which he self published in 1994. This was a cathartic experience – he had paid final tribute to those he had served so well in war.
His wife, Win, predeceased him and at his own requiem he was mourned by a son David and daughter Janet and a host of colleagues, friends and patients who had come to respect his great integrity and humanity.
Author
JM DUGGAN
References
Med J Aust 2001 175 225; Thoracic Society News 2000 10 (4); SMH 17 Nov 2000
Last Updated
May 30, 2018, 17:38 PM
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