Thomas Dunhill

Sir Thomas Peel Dunhill (3 December 1876 – 22 December 1957) was an Australian thyroid surgeon and honorary surgeon to the monarchs of the United Kingdom.

A graduate of the University of Melbourne, where he earned his Bachelor of Medicine (MB) degree in 1903 and his Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree in 1906, Dunhill worked as a surgeon at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, from 1905 to 1914, where he pioneered a new, safer surgical treatment for exophthalmic goitre, a disease of the thyroid, an operation he conducted under local anaesthesia.

Dunhill joined the Australian Army Medical Corps in 1906. During the Great War he enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force. He served in Egypt and on the Western Front with the 1st General Hospital and in July 1918 was appointed consulting surgeon to the Rouen area in France. He was thrice mentioned in despatches and made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1919.

After the war he worked at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. He became a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1933, a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1930, and an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1939. He was the first surgeon still in active surgical practice in England to receive this honour.

Early life Thomas Peel Dunhill was born at Tragowel, a grazing property near Kerang, Victoria, on 3 December 1876. He was the oldest of two sons of John Webster Dunhill, an overseer on a cattle station, and Mary Elizabeth Dunhill Peel. He had a younger brother, John Webster Dunhill. His father died from typhoid fever on 19 April 1878, and the family moved to his mother's home town of Inverleigh, Victoria, where Thomas attended Inverleigh State School. and the family moved to Daylesford, Victoria, where Lawry managed a gold mine, and was registered as a pharmacist on 11 June.

Charles Martin, the professor of physiology at the University of Melbourne influenced a decision by Dunhill to pursue a career in medicine. He graduated from the clinical school at Melbourne Hospital with his Bachelor of Medicine (MB) degree in December 1903, with three first-class honours and exhibitions in medicine and in obstetrics and gynaecology, and was appointed house physician to Henry Carr Maudsley at the Melbourne Hospital.

Early career Dunhill became interested in the treatment of exophthalmic goitre, a disease of the thyroid for which there were few treatments at the time. When he was a surgical resident at Melbourne Hospital, he had witnessed surgeon William Moore operate on two toxic multinodular goitre patients under chloroform general anaesthesia; both died. She did not respond to treatments, and Dunhill decided that surgery was required. By 1910 he had performed 312 thyroid operations,

Along with Hugh Devine and Anne Daly, he was instrumental in St Vincent's becoming a clinical school in conjunction with the University of Melbourne in 1910. Devine and Dunhill became the first tutors at the new clinical school.

In 1911 Dunhill travelled to Britain and the United States.

When Dunhill returned to Australia later that year, he became the surgeon to in-patients at St Vincent's and the chairman of the medical staff in succession to Shields, who left for the UK. but she had a son and a daughter from her first marriage.

Great War On 1 January 1906, Dunhill was appointed a provisional captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC); his rank was confirmed on 9 February 1907. Following the outbreak of the Great War, he enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF). He was commissioned as a major on 19 October 1914, and assigned to the 1st General Hospital. He departed Melbourne for Egypt on the Kyarra on 5 December 1914. On 10 March 1915, he was admitted to hospital with tonsillitis and nephritis. Personnel not expected to recover from illness or wounds within a few weeks were returned from Egypt to Australia. He reached Melbourne on the on 8 February 1916, where his AIF appointment was terminated on 25 February 1916.

Dunhill's rank of colonel became substantive on 18 March 1919. He returned to the UK on 25 April 1919. He was given permission to return to Australia via the United States at his own expense, and reached Australia again on the on 14 August 1919. He was promoted to the rank of major in the AAMC on 1 July 1919, and colonel on 24 January 1920. He was transferred to the unattached list on 1 July 1920, and then to the AAMC reserve on 1 September 1926. and made a Companion of St Michael and St George in the 1919 Birthday Honours.

Later life During the war, Dunhill had met eminent British surgeons, including George Gask, the consulting surgeon of the British Fourth Army. After the war ended, Gask was appointed the professor in charge of the surgical unit at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, and he invited Dunhill to become his assistant director. The position was a part-time one, with a salary of per annum, and Dunhill had to agree to stay for a minimum of five years. Dunhill had no surgery degree, only his MD from the University of Melbourne, but Gask waived this requirement. and many British physicians and surgeons were sceptical of his thyroid technique. Mortality was indeed slightly higher in the UK than in Australia, but this was because doctors clung to the old treatments, and patients referred for surgery tended to be in more advances stages of the disease. He retired from St Bartholomew's in 1935, but continued his private practice at 54 Harley Street. and on 9 May 1930 he became honorary surgeon to King George V in succession to Alfred Downing Fripp. He subsequently became honorary surgeon to King Edward VIII on 20 July 1936, King George VI on 2 March 1937, and Queen Elizabeth II on 5 August 1952. He was created a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in the 1933 Birthday Honours. On 1 January 1940, during the Second World War, he was appointed a part-time consulting surgeon to the Second AIF, with the rank of brigadier. He was in attendance when the King died in 1952.

Dunhill's wife died on 31 July 1942. He had insomnia, and had an easel in his living room where he would do elaborate embroideries when he could not sleep. He sold the house at 54 Harley Street and bought a country house in Hampstead he called "Tragowel". He visited Australia for the last time in 1950. In his final years he had haemochromatosis. He died at Tragowel on 22 December 1957. In a memorial lecture, Keynes said: