Sir John RamsayPrint Page

The Ramsay Memorial Library at the Launceston General Hospital was established in 1944 to commemorate Sir John Ramsay

Ramsay was surgeon-superintendent, Launceston General Hospital 1898-1912, when he commenced private practice at St Margaret's, a hospital which he designed and built himself. In 1906 he performed the first successful resuscitation of the heart by massage in Australia, opening the thorax of a patient who had clinically died during an operation.

We announce today the opening of a fund with which to establish at the Launceston General Hospital a medical library to be known as the Sir John Ramsay Memorial Library. This was suggested in "The Examiner" on Wednesday by Mr. George R. McLean, as a means of giving a grateful community an opportunity to express its appreciation of the splendid service of Sir John Ramsay over a period of 50 years and at the same time providing members of the medical profession with a facility which will materially aid them in their fight against sickness. The Northern division of the British Medical Association has publicly expressed its enthusiasm for the proposal. "We feel," said the B.M.A.'s statement, "that if Tasmanian doctors are to maintain the highest standards of efficiency and give the people the best service of which they are capable, they must have this library, through which they can keep in touch with new developments in medicine in all parts of the world." It also heartily endorses the idea of paying tribute to Sir John Ramsay. We feel that there will be generous public support for this project, with its dual purpose of honouring a man who, as an eminent surgeon and as the driving force behind every move for the development of the Launceston General Hospital, and as a leader in many other movements for the public benefit, richly deserves such a tribute, and of better equipping our medical men.
Examiner (Launceston, Tas.), 3 December 1943.

 

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