Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

CYRIL THOMAS MURRAY CAMERON, M.D., FRCS, FACS, founding member ACEP

As with many of his wartime contemporaries, Dr. Cameron seldom discussed the details of his time in the RAAF with colleagues or family members, but he did credit his Air Force service with allowing him to attend university in Adelaide – certainly something a farm boy from the tiny South Australia town of Stockport would not otherwise have expected. The springboard the RAAF provided to university allowed him to attend medical school near home as well.

After receiving his medical degree in Adelaide, the newly graduated Dr. Cameron moved to New York City, where he trained as a surgeon and received his fellowship of the American College of Surgeon (FACS). Missing his time at the beach, with a large group of expat friends from Australia and the U.K., during his U.S. surgery residency he rented a weekend summer cottage on New York's Fire Island, a summer beach community on the Atlantic Ocean, a ferry ride from Manhattan.

On Fire Island one weekend he met Joyce White, a recent McGill University graduate working for the Canadian foreign service at the Canadian consulate in New York City. The two were married near Fire Island, and Dr. Cameron finished his U.S. fellowship in surgery in Manhattan.

The couple then relocated to Scotland where Dr. Cameron did a fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) which, in addition to his FACS from New York, would allow him to practice and/or teach surgery almost anywhere in the world.

While the Camerons were in Edinburgh, they had their daughter, Cathi Anne. (Who maintains they only had one child because any more would not have been "portable," given her father's wanderlust – likely ignited during his time in the RAAF.)

After finishing his UK surgery fellowship and spending some time in Edinburgh, the family returned to Manhattan where Dr. Cameron began teaching surgery at New York Medical College as well as seeing private patients. The family enjoyed more summers on Fire Island together as well as regularly travelling to Canada to visit Mrs. Cameron's family and friends in the Ottawa, Ontario area and beyond. (Though being a Southern Hemisphere native, he preferred it if his mother-in-law, Violet White, came to visit the Cameron family for Christmas, so he didn’t have to deal with Canadian amounts of snow at the height of winter!)

Soon, the long-distance travel bug bit again, and Dr. Cameron did what he often did to get across continents - he signed on as a ship's surgeon on a large freighter so the family's furniture - AND his prized American convertible - could all arrive at their destination in Adelaide together (after logging through Suez and many other ports of call, picking up and dropping off freight all along the way.)

With his daughter at school at Highgate Elementary in Adelaide, the family travelled regularly around Australia to visit his ex-RAAF friends and extended family in his prized left-wheel-drive U.S. convertible (which he often drove with the top down so the steering wheel’s location on the “wrong” side would be noticed – even after his daughter took a direct hit from a passing galah who clearly considered himself a better natural flier than the car’s owner - and was happy to splatter an airborne opinion all over the back seat of the speeding American import!)

When not driving the back roads with or without the family, at the hospital, playing tennis or golf, or off visiting far-flung colleagues, Dr. Cameron still enjoyed flying and gliding with some Air Force friends who had continued once they came home from the service.

On travels abroad to present surgery papers or do medical training (in a VERY different time – and century) just a word to a flight attendant from an ex-RAAF member would result in a trip to the cockpit to visit with the pilots (themselves usually having served in similar Air Force roles somewhere in the world.)

Those pilot visits also resulted in some spectacular footage via his one lasting hobby – filming the places and landmarks of the many cities and countries visited during a lifetime of travel for work and pleasure. His films included some great shots of take-offs and landings with bird’s eye views of major metropolitan areas across the globe, courtesy of those very welcoming cockpit crews.

Time in Australia (of course) was followed by another of what Dr. Cameron liked to refer to as a “circumnavigation of the globe” back to New York – this time to become Chief of Surgery at Metropolitan Hospital – one of the teaching hospitals run by the city’s New York Medical College. At the time, Metropolitan’s location at the intersection of Harlem and Spanish Harlem provided an almost wartime supply of critical knife and other wounds essential to teaching surgical students all facets of their art – and of developing the newest methods of surgical repairs.

While Chief of Surgery at Metropolitan, Dr. Cameron was referred to as “World’s Foremost Authority on Stabwounds to the Abdomen” since nearby gang wars yielded so many stabbing victims. He continued to accept a limited number of private patients while teaching, running his department and commuting to the suburbs to be with his family.

During this time, he also served as medical advisor on several medical-related feature films and television shows. In fact, one of his medical students, previous to working on the international TV hit “ER”, wrote and produced its predecessor U.S. medical drama, “St. Elsewhere”. Dr. Cameron noted this because in papers he presented, as well as in lectures to his students – including the medical student who went on to a highly honored TV and film career – a Cameron trademark comparison was to refer to the other area hospital as “Elsewhere General”. (He never commented on the fact – nor would he have admitted –  that a crusty lead character in his student’s TV show “St. Elsewhere” bore a surprising similarity to him!)

Unfortunately, changing U.S. politics meant a reversal of strong New York City gun control laws. What were largely non-fatal stab wounds requiring lots of teachable surgeries soon became mostly fatal – and irreparable – shot gun blasts far less conducive to life-saving teaching. So Dr. Cameron decided to put his skills to work in a field which was a specialty (like surgery) everywhere else in the world – but not yet in America – Emergency Medicine.

 A city three hours up the Hudson River from Manhattan was in the process of building a new hospital, and offered to build its Emergency Department to Dr. Cameron’s specifications if he would come and run the department. While it would mean yet another relocation for himself and his family, the opportunity to break ground, literally and metaphorically, in Emergency Medicine was too much of a temptation, and he accepted their offer.

His Canadian wife was now closer to home and accustomed to the colder, snowier climate found in the region. She became the one to clean the snow off the cars, while he remained wed to his roots when it came to loving warmer weather. It was ESSENTIAL to send him somewhere sunny during the Upstate New York winter – usually to Puerto Rico in February to present a paper at the American Medical Association’s annual meeting there – or his family reported he was not an easy person to live with for the rest of the long, cold Upstate New York winter.

During his time in Emergency Medicine, Dr. Cameron published “Public Relations in the Emergency Department,” (Brady) which was widely used in teaching medical professionals, and he became one of the founding members of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP).

It was on his way to an ACEP meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, that Dr. Cameron - who did not drink or smoke – had his first massive heart attack (as his mother before him had at a very early age) and could not return home to New York for several months. While he eventually returned home and to work, triple bypass surgery followed, and he was forced to retire from medicine.

Many people who have spent their lives in positions of authority and are forced into an unplanned retirement at a comparatively early age don’t find leaving work an easy transition. When he mentioned the desire to see friends and family in Australia again, his wife and daughter – who were both working by that time – were delighted he had found something he wanted to do, and encouraged him to go if he had all necessary medical permission, which he assured them he had. So it was time to “circumnavigate” yet again.

Dr. Cameron went to visit with his maiden cousins, Doreen and Jean Cameron – one a retired hospital matron, the other a retired head of school, in Adelaide. From their attached homes, he could travel to visit former RAAF fliers, medical school friends and others, which he did. What he had failed to mention to his family before he left the U.S. is that he had been diagnosed with what he referred to with an odd pride as “the Australian national disease” – malignant melanoma. In the few short months before his death, he saw almost all of his former friends, colleagues and acquaintances, and his wife and daughter arrived shortly before his death.

Dr. Cameron never renounced his Australian citizenship – a point of pride in the many countries to which he travelled and in which he lived – and remained proud of his country, his service to it, and the friends and opportunities that RAAF service provided him – to the very end, which came in Adelaide as he wished.

As of 2017, his daughter survives him and lives in Saratoga Springs, New York. She would be happy to hear from any of his surviving friends or their families via e-mail at [email protected]