James Alexander Hutchison / [George Eli Armstrong].

  • Armstrong, George Eli, 1855-1933.
Date:
[1931]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: James Alexander Hutchison / [George Eli Armstrong]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Reprint from SURGERY, GYNECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS September, 1931, Vol. LI 11, 404-403 JAMES ALEXANDER HUTCHISON GEORGE E. ARMSTRONG, M.D., F.A.C.S., Montreal, Quebec DR. HUTCHISON was born in Montreal and received his early education at the Montreal High School. His parents then moved to Goderich, Ontario, and there he attended the Goderich Collegiate Institute from which he passed to McGill University. He graduated from the Medical Faculty of McGill in 1884. At the time that he graduated he had not quite attained his majority and went to Edinburgh for further study and obtained the degree of L.R.C.P.& S.(Edin.). On returning to Montreal he began as a general practitioner. In 1891 he was appointed surgeon to the Out-patient Department of the Montreal General Hos¬ pital, and in 1894 became full surgeon, which position he filled until 1924. Dr. Hutchison was appointed demonstrator in clinical surgery in McGill University in 1898, and was made associate professor in surgery in 1913 and emeritus professor, in 1923. As a surgeon Dr. Hutchison was highly esteemed by the profession, and trusted and loved by his patients. He was a painstaking diagnostician and a careful, almost meticulous, operator, and his results would bear the closest scrutiny. As a consulting surgeon he was in demand over a wide area. Dr. Hutchison taught surgery to the students of McGill for twenty-six years. His bedside clinics in the wards of the Montreal General Hospital were models of bedside teaching. He had a gift for inspiring in students an inquiring mind, care¬ ful observation, and care in reaching logical conclusions. He taught them how to examine patients without inflicting unnecessary pain or discomfort. His cheerful manner and gentle ways were an object lesson to his students which were never forgotten. His theater clinics were clear, always to the point, and so carefully prepared that his class always dispersed feeling that they had got something to hang their hat on. It is to be noted that with all his outside interests, it was only on the rarest occasions that he missed a clinic or lecture, and never without timely provision of a substitute. He was always highly esteemed by the student body. For thirty-five years Dr. Hutchison was chief medical officer of the Grand Trunk Railway and of the Canadian National Railway into which the Grand Trunk was merged. It was a great responsibility. It meant the appointment and supervision of a large army of district surgeons, the organization of a pension fund,