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Emeritus Consultants Biographies
Three years after graduation, Dr Clark was appointed to the Royal Perth Hospital after a brief residency at Fremantle Hospital demonstrated his superior ability. He was a left-hander who became ambidextrous and developed such surgical skill he was called "one of the world's great surgeons". Initially a general surgeon, he focused on neurosurgery and thoracic surgery, devising many instruments. After the Second World War he confined his interest to thoracic surgery. In the War (1940-43), he became a Lieutenant Colonel as Senior Surgeon of the 2/7th Australian General Hospital in the Middle East where he designed and staffed a Mobile Field Operating Unit used just behind the front line, the first, in the Australian army. From 1943 to 1946 he was Colonel, Commanding Officer of the 118th Australian Military Hospital in Northam. After the war he was involved in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis as Consultant Thoracic Surgeon to Wooroloo Sanatorium but the lack of metropolitan treatment for tuberculosis led Dr Clark (and Dr Alan King) to seek help, resulting in the building of the Perth Chest Hospital later to become Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, where he continued in active surgery until 1968. For years Chairman of the State Committee of the College, he played a seminal role in the planning and rebuilding of the Royal Perth Hospital in 1957 and later strove and assisted in the establishment of the Medical School and selection of its foundation staff members. In 1947 the Thoracic Surgical Unit was officially established for surgery of the respiratory system and concurrently Dr Clark pioneered surgery of the heart and great vessels. In 1951 he performed the first intracardiac operation (closed mitral valvotomy) in Western Australia. At the request of the Commonwealth Government in 1956, Dr Clark took the first thoracic surgical team (recruited from RPH staff) to Port Moresby in the Australian Territory of New Guinea for surgical treatment of tuberculosis and again in 1957. He was considered a perfectionist in all things being a scratch golfer and Foundation member at Lake Karrinyup Golf Club and outstanding gunshot and snooker player. The accolades of his colleagues attest to the privilege of friendship with this man who had a great sense of fun, a zest for living and for the best things in life. He was recognised as one of Western Australia's great surgeons by the naming of the F.J.Clark Lecture Theatre at the Perth Medical Centre in 1975. Dr Clark, who had two sons by his first marriage, died in August 1970. His wife Lou (nee Shenton) died in January 2002. |
