Andrew Russell Murray

Andrew Russell Murray FRCSEd (22 August 1910 – 1 December 1955) was an Australian orthopaedic surgeon who pioneered developments in hand surgery while working at Leith Hospital, Scotland. These included pollicisation ( the transfer of the index finger to replace a missing thumb), the use of stainless steel joint prostheses to replace finger joints and the use of wire to stabilise finger fractures and bone grafts. He later worked as an orthopaedic surgeon in Brisbane, Australia. On 1 December 1955 he was shot dead by Karl Kast in the "Brisbane medical massacre".

Early life and education Murray was born in Lyell, Tasmania, Australia, in 1910, the son of Russell Mervyn Murray, a mining engineer, and his wife Vivienne Murray (née Douglas). He went to school at Scotch College, Melbourne, and then studied medicine at Ormond College in the University of Melbourne. Two accidents in childhood had resulted in disabilities. His left leg had been amputated after a shooting accident. In a separate accident he sustained a permanent nerve injury of the left ulnar nerve resulting in impaired function of the hand. Despite these setbacks he became an "accomplished cricketer and ballroom dancer" at university.

Career in Scotland Murray took a temporary post as assistant surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and in 1941 he was appointed associate assistant surgeon at Leith Hospital, where he became surgeon in charge of a hand clinic. He qualified as fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (FRCSEd) in 1943. In 1946 Murray published techniques in hand surgery which, according to Hooper, These included pollicisation (the transfer of the index finger on a neurovascular pedicle to replace a missing thumb), the transfer of a finger from one hand to the other, joint replacement of finger joints using stainless steel hinge joints and the use of wire to fix bone grafts in the hand. The clinic which Murray established was an early example of a specialist multidisciplinary hand clinic, incorporating physiotherapy and rehabilitation which included vocational training. Hooper considered that this was "the more remarkable for being developed by a young surgeon working in a small, busy hospital in wartime." These were the first artificial joint prosthesis in hand joints, the first interosseous wiring for finger fractures and the first index finger pollicisation for thumb reconstruction, which had been previously attributed to Gosset, who had published his first paper on the topic in 1949, three years after Murray's publication on the topic.

When medical personnel returning from war service were given preference in appointment to permanent hospital posts in the UK, Murray was not appointed to a permanent post in Edinburgh and worked for a short time at the Royal Oldham Hospital, Lancashire, before returning to Australia in 1948. His main interest remained hand surgery and he published studies on hand sepsis and carpal tunnel syndrome. Katz then detonated bombs in the office of John Lahz, before shooting himself through the head.