Robert Hamilton Russell

Robert Hamilton Russell, FRCS, (3 September 1860 – 30 April 1933) was an English-born Australian surgeon, president of the Medical Society of Victoria from 1903.

Early life Russell was born at Farningham, Kent, England, the youngest son of James Russell, a farmer, and his wife Ellen, née Phillips. Russell was educated at Nassau school, Barnes, London, and then from 1878 at the medical school of King's College Hospital where he was a pupil of Joseph Lister's eventually becoming the last of the house surgeons who worked under his personal guidance. Russell took the diploma of M.R.C.S. in 1882 and, after experience as a house surgeon at King's College hospital, went to Shrewsbury for two years as resident surgeon at the Royal Salop Infirmary 1884–85. Russell then studied in Continental Europe before returning to England in 1889 suffering a lung condition (possibly tuberculosis), and became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (London).

In later years he suffered from osteoarthritis, became very lame, and was threatened with the loss of the sight of one of his eyes. This may have been a contributing cause of the accident by which he lost his life while driving a motor car on 30 April 1933. He never married, he was cremated and the remains returned to England.

Legacy Russell was well-spoken and urbane, he was also an excellent pianist and had an appreciation of the best music; Percy Grainger recollected him as 'the first exquisite pianist in my life'. Russell was a fine surgeon and a remarkable clinical teacher. Every case was made the subject of careful, accurate and complete study, and every student was trained to think on surgical lines, always with the proviso that the recovery of the patient was the important thing. As a student of Lister he believed in the importance of the dressing of the wounds, and to go the rounds with him while he explained the reason for each method of application was an education in itself. Russell was not a believer in complicated methods of surgery and was always seeking the simplest way. He earned the affection and admiration of all his students, and his great ability made him a member of the small band of Australian medical men whose influence has been felt outside his own country. There is a bust of Russell by Paul Montford at the Alfred hospital, and an intermediate hospital block attached to the Alfred hospital has been named Hamilton Russell House in his memory.