Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology (1862 - 1882)

The Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology, founded in 1862, was the first medical department to be established at the University of Melbourne. Throughout its lifetime, it was headed by the first professor of the Melbourne medical course, George Halford.

In 1882 it was split into a Department of Anatomy and Pathology and a Department of Physiology, an arrangement that lasted for just over twenty years.

Image source: University of Melbourne Medical School Jubilee, 1914, portion of plate facing p 60.

• Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology Department

The central role of anatomical studies in medicine was recognised in mid-1862 when the Victorian Parliament became the first legislature in Australia to permit the use of cadavers for dissection by medical students. The passage of the act provided the first legal basis for anatomical teaching in Australia,.

Later the same year George Britton Halford, lecturer in anatomy at the Grosvenor Place School of Medicine in London, was appointed University of Melbourne professor of anatomy, physiology and pathology. Thereafter he usually referred to himself in correspondence as professor of anatomy.

In 1863 Halford gave the first anatomy lesson to three students in buildings at the rear of his rented house in Madeline St (later Swanston St), opposite the university. For several years, members of the University Council had been preparing the ground for this event. As early as June 1859, they had commissioned Thomas Ralph, a surgeon, to collect pathological specimens for a museum of anatomy and pathology to be used for teaching purposes. This he dutifully did, preserving numerous specimens of organs and bone from corpses in a laboratory near the Melbourne Hospital (then adjacent to the Public Library in central Melbourne).

Two years later William Rees, one of the first group of students to be taught by Halford was appointed a demonstrator in anatomy and given the title prosector, a tradition that continued for many years. By 1873 Halford was president of the university's Professorial Board and he set about creating a Faculty of Medicine to oversee the medical course. TheFaculty replaced the Medical School Committee, of which Halford was not a member. It has been suggested that he devised this strategy to wrest control of the medical school from the Committee, with which he was sometimes at odds. At the same time, he shored up his influence by ensuring that the Professorial Board also recommended that the professor of anatomy became dean of the faculty.

Halford subsequently tired of the growing administrative burden of the deanship and decided he wanted to spend more time on research. He advocated the appointment of a second professor who would become professor of anatomy while he would be professor of physiology. At first the University Council responded by appointing Melbourne medical graduate, Harry Brookes Allen, lecturer in anatomy.Then in 1882, recognising Allen's ability, it agreed to a split the department, appointing Halford professor of physiology while Allen professor of descriptive and surgical anatomy and pathology.

Previous and Subsequent Entities

 1862 - 1882 Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology
       1882 - Department of Physiology
       1882 - 1905 Department of Anatomy and Pathology
             1905 - Department of Pathology
             1905 - 1923 Department of Anatomy
                   1923 - 1993 Department of Anatomy and Histology
                         1993 - Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology

Faculty

• Faculty of Medicine, The University of Melbourne (1876 - 1989)