James Rutherford Morison

James Rutherford Morison was born at Hutton Henry, County Durham. His father, Dr. John Morison, who had obtained the LRCP Edinburgh and MD Aberdeen, was a colliery surgeon. He studied medicine at Mason’s College in Birmingham before graduating from Edinburgh in 1874. He had been selected as a Dresser to Joseph Lister and House Surgeon to Patrick Heron Watson, early contacts which were to be hugely influential. Heron Watson was bold and skilful in the operating theatre but was opposed to Lister’s “new fangled methods” of antisepsis. Morison would later recall how he would walk the diplomatic tightrope of spending as much time as he could observing the results of antiseptic surgery in Lister’s ward without appearing disloyal to his own chief.

On his father’s early death he took on the financial support of his family which necessitated going into General Practice in Hartlepool where he soon became Physician to the local hospital. His urge to do surgery was so strong that here, despite his physicianly appointment, he performed most of the surgery at the hospital and was able to pass the FRCS Ed. In 1879. A visit to Billroth in Vienna was also to prove hugely influential and shortly after this he was appointed Assistant Surgeon to The Royal Infirmary and The Royal Victoria Infirmary Newcastle, becoming one of the first specialist surgeons.

It was first and foremost as a teacher that he acquired a reputation and he clearly inspired many undergraduate and postgraduate students who remained fiercely loyal to him throughout his life and with many of whom he maintained correspondence as an avid writer to letters.

They would describe him as a born teacher; as an astute diagnostician whose early kills had been honed in Edinburgh by the lectures of Joseph Bell.

In many areas of surgery he was a pioneer. He was among the first to use a sigmoidoscope; he was an early pioneer of suturing of the patella for fracture and the operation of medial meniscectomy for torn semi-lunar cartilage of the knee joint. It was his description of the hepato-renal recess, the space between the under surface of the liver and the upper pole of the right kidney that was to bring lasting eponymous fame. His penchant for wide exposure led to the description of the incision for cholecystectomy which bore his name.

He was a diligent writer and, through his publications, his reputation spread so that his clinic became one which overseas surgeons increasingly visited. He was appointed Professor of Surgery in Newcastle in 1910, a position which he held for the next eleven years.

In 1916 his work at the Northumberland War Hospital at Gosforth inspired his discovery of BIPP (Bismuth Iodoform Paraffin Paste). Bandages soaked in BIPP were used to aid the primary healing of compound fractures and of contaminated wounds and represented a significant advance in antiseptic surgery. The technique became widely used and known throughout the world as “Morison’s method” It is a tribute to the efficacy of this simple effective and ingenious preparation that it was still in use in the UK at the end of the 20th century.

He retired to St. Boswalls where he became an active farmer in retirement. He was buried at St. Boswalls within sight of his beloved Eildon hills.