From Australia’s Jewish Past
Sir John Isaacs Loewenthal – a talented and remarkable military surgeon and academic
Sir John Isaacs Lowenthal
John was born on 22 December 1914 in Bondi, Sydney, the seventh and youngest child of native-born parents Abraham Marcus Loewenthal, commercial agent, well-known Sydney businessman and philanthropist, and his wife Carlotta Minnie. John’s father did not become involved in insurance until he retired, becoming a consultant to the AMP Society. At that time, he held the Australian record of having “written” £3,750,000 worth of life insurance. He insured his own life in favour of several charities he had supported.
John attended Bondi Public and Sydney Grammar schools, winning first place in literary subjects in 1931, and was made school captain. Despite showing little interest in science at school, he enrolled in medicine at the University of Sydney, graduating with second-class honours. From 1938 to 1939, he was a resident medical officer at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. In late 1939 he became a senior resident pathologist and the following year was awarded a fellowship in surgery at the recently established postgraduate school at Prince Henry Hospital Little Bay. His fellowship unfortunately lasted a mere eight weeks before he was mobilised as captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps on 3 June 1940. He was posted to the 2nd/9th Field Regiment and served in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt until he was hospitalised with malaria-induced jaundice. In 1942, he joined the 2nd/1st Casualty Clearing Station and was posted to Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea. Again, he contracted malaria and was sent back to Australia in 1943 for treatment. When he had recovered sufficiently, he was transferred to the Australian General Hospital in Heidelberg, Melbourne, where he performed general, urological, and orthopaedic surgery. Whilst there, he researched the clinical use of the newly discovered penicillin and, for this work, he was awarded a Master of Science degree in 1946 by the University of Melbourne. In October 1945 he was posted to the Military Hospital in Concord, where he remained until his appointment with the AIF terminated at the end of 1945.
In mid-1946 John went to London and later that year he qualified as a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, England. In June 1947 he was appointed lecturer in surgery at the Victoria University of Manchester and deputy director at the Manchester Royal Infirmary Surgical Professorial Unit. In July 1948, he resigned to return to Sydney where he began private practice. He became a tutor in surgery in 1948 at the University of Sydney and, despite the hostility of some of the surgeons at RPAH he was appointed honorary assistant-surgeon there in 1949, and honorary consulting surgeon in 1950 at Ryde District Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital.
In March 1956, and now the Bosch Professor of Surgery at the University of Sydney, he began to build up the research and teaching of his almost non-existent department—which resembled ‘an empty house . . . likened . . . to the Marie Celeste‘—especially in the teaching hospitals beyond the citadel of RPAH. He classified himself as ‘an average sort of teacher’, even though his students were in awe of him, one saying, ‘He terrified me, like a clipped English colonel’. John made significant appointments at Royal North Shore, St Vincent’s, and Concord hospitals, and established several new chairs. He also supported the work of the research laboratories, expanding the scope of his department with a lectureship in diagnostic radiology, and a chair in orthopaedic and traumatic surgery. Although his interests developed in the specialty fields of vascular and transplantation surgery, he performed a diminishing number of operations and little research after his academic appointment. He was, however, a great internationalist who travelled the world presenting his colleagues’ and subordinates’ research. He was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Medicine from 1965 to 1971, a fellow from 1965 to 1966 of the senate and acting dean in 1977.
John had his critics, but his charm, ease in dealing with people of all social levels, and his capacity as a committee man were widely acknowledged. He lacked humbug and was described as ‘a happy, genial (yet forceful) personality’ and one of ‘the most generous’ men. Various colleagues believed that he was partial to those who supported him. They thought that, while he made good appointments, he was cool and often unhelpful to those who disagreed with him. In his university position, he tended to do things first and advise people later. Described as a ‘wheeler-dealer’, he wanted to be ‘top cookie, at the centre of things’. He remained a fiercely loyal University of Sydney man, hostile to important figures in the fledgling medical faculty at the University of New South Wales and its Vice-Chancellor. He retained an association with the army, was promoted to colonel and was appointed a consulting surgeon to Army Headquarters, Melbourne, in 1957. During the Vietnam War, he was so shocked that repatriated Australian casualties were not being sent to Concord Repatriation Hospital as well as to major teaching hospitals that he demanded the Minister for the Army visit Ingleburn Military Camp to see the conditions to which the injured men were being subjected.
John was elected a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1955, serving as a councillor from 1961 to 1974 and elected as President from 1971 to 1974. He had the reputation of being an outward-looking and reformist president who sought to alter the Melbourne dominance in that college; he was also associated with its journal, the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery. He helped establish, in 1960 the National Heart Foundation of Australia, becoming its National President from 1975 to 1979. He was also associated with the Cancer Council of New South Wales and the National Health and Medical Research Council. He was an honorary fellow of the American College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, and the College of Physicians, Surgeons, and Gynaecologists of South Africa. Although he did not initially share the enthusiasm of the younger staff at Sydney Hospital for building a new hospital at Westmead, he did change his position, became an active member of its board, and received much of the credit for its development. He also joined the Royal North Shore Hospital and the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children boards of management. John was appointed a Companion (CMG) in 1975, and knighted in 1978 for his ‘’services to health’’.
He was an outstanding surgeon and was one of the generations of great Australian surgeons who learned their craft in the demanding conditions of World War II. In the words of Professor Alexander Boyd, Professor of Surgery at the University of Manchester he was ‘a really good safe and dependable clinician; a neat and careful operator who [paid] great attention to technique’. Of all the University of Sydney men of his generation, he was the closest to being a ‘national figure’. He is commemorated by the RACS John Loewenthal Research Fellowship and the National Heart Foundation Sir John Loewenthal Award. His portrait by Robert (‘Alfie’) Hannaford hangs in the RACS building in Melbourne.
In his spare time, he enjoyed gardening and belonged to many organisations. On 17 August 1979, John collapsed at a dinner held in honour of his impending retirement and on 25 August he passed away due to heart attack complications. He was survived by his wife, who he married in 1944, two sons and two daughters. Whilst he had never been baptised a Christian, he had long abandoned any interest in Judaism and was cremated.
The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:
Australian Dictionary of Biography – John Carmody, University of Sydney, Royal Australian College of Surgeons, Royal College of Surgeons UK.
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