Hinder, Henry Vincent Critchley
From Faculty of Medicine Online Museum and Archive
MB 1889 ChM 1889
Harry Critchley Hinder, the son of Captain Edward Hinder, was born in 1865 at Ashfield. He was educated at Sydney Grammar School and Newington College, matriculating to the University of Sydney in 1884. He enrolled in Medicine II the following year and graduated in minimum time with honours in 1889.
As a student, he had been a founding member of the Medical Society serving on its committee and later becoming its President. He was one of four first University graduates to be appointed Resident Medical Officer at the Prince Alfred Hospital. After completing his term there, he entered into partnership with his brother-in-law Richard Theophilus Jones who had started practice in Ashfield and married Harry’s sister soon afterwards.
Harry established his own general practice, but with an emphasis on surgery, in the Western Suburbs and together with his brother-in-law founded the Western Suburbs Cottage Hospital.
In 1894 he became an Assistant Honorary Surgeon at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and shortly thereafter gave up general practice to open rooms as a consultant surgeon in Macquarie Street. He rose in seniority to second on the staff of Senior Honorary Surgeons at the Hospital at the time of his death. He was appointed University Lecturer in Clinical Surgery in 1899 and became a highly respected, enthusiastic teacher. He was the first graduate of the Medical School to hold a lecturing position at the University. For many years, he was a member of the Council of the NSW branch of the BMA and became its President in 1909.
Harry died unexpectedly in 1913 before his career had reached its peak. While operating on a woman dangerously ill with general peritonitis, he accidentally pricked his thumb with a surgical needle. Intense lymphangitis resulted and he developed an infective bacterial endocarditis, leading to his death after two months of painful illness.
His name is commemorated in the Faculty by a memorial prize awarded for proficiency in surgery which was founded in 1918 to honour Harry’s tenure as Lecturer in Clinical Surgery.
Citation: Mellor, Lise (2008) Hinder, Henry Vincent Critchley. Faculty of Medicine Online Museum and Archive, University of Sydney.
An alternate version appears in: Young, J A, Sefton, A J, Webb, N. Centenary Book of the University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine, (1984) Sydney University Press for The University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine.