Surgical Limits: The Life of Gordon Murray

John H. Gryfe is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon practising in
Toronto.

“Surgeons seek to cure by the scalpel and to arrest disease if not
vanquish it. This reflects a surgical mindset.” Shelley McKellar thus
defends the successes and failures of one of Canada’s most
controversial surgeons, Dr. Gordon Murray. In the same brush stroke, she
paints the picture of a practitioner capable of mastering the most
challenging of technical problems, but incapable of accepting the
limitations of a steadfast belief that the human body will respond to
repair in the same manner as any other sophisticated machine.

A two-year military career, which included participation in the battle
at Vimy Ridge, interrupted Murray’s medical schooling. A short stint
in general practice in Stratford, Ontario, confirmed the young
graduate’s need to fulfil a vision of professional service as a
full-time surgeon. In July 1927, he returned to Toronto, secure in the
belief that his training in both the United States and Great Britain, in
addition to his recognized technical skills, would serve him well in the
role of one of the young surgeon–scientists that the University of
Toronto was turning toward with great expectation and hope. His
participation in the early research on heparin use led to innovative
surgical management of injured blood vessels, with subsequent
spectacular success in the treatment of “blue babies.”

Murray’s inquisitive mind would later take him into cancer research
and unsuccessful attempts in developing anti-cancer sera. A final
catastrophic foray into creating techniques for the surgical repair of a
severed spinal cord left him publicly ridiculed and stripped of the
glories of his earlier successes. In skilled and compassionate language,
McKellar portrays a life that was initially filled with the anticipation
of discovery and medical cure, only to be destroyed in the fiery folly
of ego.