Sir William Macewen, (; 22 June 1848 – 22 March 1924) was a Scottish surgeon. He was a pioneer in modern brain surgery, considered the father of neurosurgery and contributed to the development of bone graft surgery, the surgical treatment of hernia and of pneumonectomy (removal of the lungs).
Career
Macewen was born near Port Bannatyne, near Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, in western Scotland in 1848.
He studied Medicine at the University of Glasgow, receiving a medical degree in 1872. He was greatly influenced by Joseph, Lord Lister (1827–1912), who revolutionised surgery by developing antisepsis, by the use of phenol, thus decreasing drastically the enormous mortality of surgical patients due to infections. By following Lister and adopting systematically the use of scrubbing (deep cleansing and disinfection of hands and arms), sterilisation of surgical tools, use of surgical gowns, and (recently discovered) anaesthesia, Macewen became one of the most innovative surgeons of his time and was able to greatly advance modern surgical technique and improve the recovery of patients.
In 1875, he became an assistant surgeon at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, being promoted to full surgeon in 1877. Around 1880 he began a training programme for nurses (focussing upon sterilisation) at the infirmary under the charge of the Matron, Mrs Rebecca Strong (1843-1944). In 1881 he was appointed lecturer on Systematic Surgery at the Royal Infirmary School of Medicine. In 1883 he was appointed as Surgeon to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow. In 1892 Macewen became Regius Professor of Surgery at the University of Glasgow (the post which Lister had held when Macewen was a student) and transferred his surgical activities to the Western Infirmary. In 1896, Macewan was awarded the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh.
He was knighted in the 1902 Coronation Honours for services to medicine, receiving the accolade from King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace on 24 October that year.
In 1916 Macewen helped to found the Princess Louise Scottish Hospital for Limbless Sailors and Soldiers in Erskine (now the Erskine Hospital), near Glasgow, which was urgently needed to treat the thousands of military who had lost their limbs in the First World War. Macewen was its first chief surgeon and with the help of engineers and workers at the nearby Yarrow Shipbuilders he designed the Erskine artificial limb. He trained a team of pattern-makers to manufacture them for the hospital. Macewen recruited the first matron for Erskine, Agnes Carnochan Douglas, who he had worked with in the Western Infrmary in Glasgow.
Macewen died in Glasgow on 22 March 1924. He lived at Garrochty on the Isle of Bute until his death and was buried nearby in the churchyard of St Blane's Church at Kingarth.
Neurosurgery
Following the work of John Hughlings Jackson (1835–1911) and David Ferrier (1843–1924) on neurological mapping of functions in the brain, Macewen demonstrated in 1876 that it was possible to use a precise clinical examination to determine the possible site of a tumor or lesion in the brain, by observing its effects on the side and extension of alterations in motor and sensory functions. Thus, in 1876 he diagnosed an abscess in the frontal lobe of a boy, but the family refused permission to operate. When the patient died his diagnosis and localisation were found to be correct.
In 1879 he performed the first successful intracranial surgery where the site of the lesion (a left frontal meningioma) was localized solely by the preoperative focal epileptic signs (twitching of the face and arms in the opposite site of the lesion). On the basis of these signs Macewen thought that there was good evidence of an "irritation to the lower and middle portions of the ascending convolutions…in the left frontal lobe". A trephined hole in the skull near the purported site of the lesion showed a big subdural tumor. The patient, a teenage girl, lived for eight more years, and a subsequent autopsy showed no trace of the tumor. He later used this many times to successfully operate on brain abscesses (in 1876) and hematomas and on the spine. This was a great triumph of medicine.