William Colin Mackenzie - Medical Career

Medical Career

Mackenzie had a year's hospital practice at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, for two years was senior resident medical officer at the Royal Children's Hospital, and was in general practice for some time at North Melbourne. In 1904 he paid his first visit to Europe and obtained by examination his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. At the Children's hospital, Melbourne, he had been much interested in the problem of the after treatment of infantile paralysis, and while in Europe worked with Professor Vulpius at Heidelberg, and studied the work being done by Sir Robert Jones at Liverpool. Coming back to Australia, he found there was then a severe epidemic of infantile paralysis, and was able to use his newly acquired knowledge of the principles of muscle rest and recovery. He was not, however, content to merely follow other men. He felt that the main problem was how to bring the muscles into normal use again, and however commonplace his methods may seem today, at the time, they appeared to be revolutionary. He was the first to Speak of "muscle re-education" and to realize the importance of the action of gravity in attempts to regain muscle function.

A few years later Sir Arthur Keith in his Menders of the Maimed, (1919), paid a tribute to Mackenzie's work in this direction. "Dr Mackenzie," said, "makes no claim to be the discoverer of the 'minimal load' treatment of disabled muscles, but I am certain that no one has realized its practical importance more than he, and no one has realized and applied the right methods to the restoration of disabled muscles with a greater degree of skill." This recognition, however, came many years later, and during the first decade of this century Mackenzie had to do much research in finding out what could be done. Mackenzie was appointed Caroline Kay scholar and demonstrator in anatomy at the university of Melbourne in 1907 under Professor R. J. A. Berry, and about this time became much interested in the fauna of Australia. He leased land at Badger Creek, near Healesville, Victoria, which subsequently became the Colin Mackenzie sanctuary, and he spent much time on the unravelling of the anatomical details of the koala, the platypus, the wombat, and other Australian animals. Early in 1915 he went to England, did further work in anatomy, and assisted Sir Arthur Keith in the cataloguing of war specimens. In 1917 he organized a muscle re-education department for Sir Robert Jones at the orthopaedic military hospital at Shepherd's Bush, London, and in 1918 published his The Action of Muscles (reprinted in 1919, second ed. 1930). Another book published in 1918 was the seventh edition of Treves's Surgical Applied Anatomy, in the revision of which Mackenzie had collaborated with Sir Arthur Keith.