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Australia

Colonel (Col) Reginald Angel Money CBE MC ED.

Col Money enlisted as a Gunner in 107 Battery, 7th Field Artillery Brigade on 23 December 1915. He departed for overseas service on 12 May 1916. On 8 May 1917 he was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant and was awarded the Military Cross for his actions during the Battle of Menin Road on 30 September 1917 "for conspicious gallantry and devotion to duty". He returned to Australia on 25 January 1919 where he trained as a doctor at the University of Sydney, and was placed on the reserve of officers on 1 September 1922. He was promoted through the ranks in the Australian Army Medical Corps, to Lieutenant Colonel on 15 October 1934 and given command of 9 Field Ambulance for four years. He was seconded to the AIF on 1 July 1940 and promoted to Colonel in command of 6 Australian General Hospital (6 AGH). He commanded 1 Australian General Hospital between 31 May 1941 and 28 July 1941 before resuming command of 6 AGH where he remained until 15 November 1943.

Reginald Money was one of Australia's first specialist neurosurgeons. A study tour to the United States and the United Kingdom in the early 1930s, during which he worked with leading neurosurgeons, inspired him to specialise in this new field. For 30 years from 1937 he played a central role at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, as Honorary Neurosurgeon and later on the Hospital's Board of management. At the Hospital he was instrumental in establishing Australia's first fully equipped department of neurosurgery in 1938. Money was a founding member of the Society of Australasian Neurosurgical Surgeons in 1940 and was twice President of the Neurosurgical Society of Australia.

1914

Career position - Served with the Australian Imperial Forces

1917 Award - Military Cross (MC)

1923 Education - MB ChM, University of Sydney

1923 - 1928 Career position - Resident Medical Officer, Registrar and Medical Superintendent, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney

1928 - 1937 Career position - Assistant Surgeon and Tutor in Surgery, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney

1931 Education - Fellow, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons

1932 Education - Fellow, Royal College of Surgeons

1935 - 1956 Career position - Lecturer in Traumatic Neurosurgery, University of Sydney

1937 - 1957 Career position - Honorary Neurosurgeon, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney

1938 -Career position - Honorary Consulting Neurosurgeon, Royal North Shore and St George Hospitals, Sydney

1940 -Career position - Founding Member, Society of Australasian Neurological Surgeons

1942 - 1943 -Career position - Consultant in Neurosurgery to Allied forces in Syria and Palestine

1943 Award - Commander of the British Empire (CBE)

1953 -Career position - Member, Board, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney

1953 -Career position - President, Neurosurgical Society of Australia

1957 -Career position - Consulting Neurosurgeon, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney

1957 Life event - Retired from medical staff, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney

1961 - 1969 Career position - Member, Traffic Injury Committee, National Health and Medical Research Council

1965 Career position - President, Neurosurgical Society of Australia

1968 - 1973 Career position - Vice-Chairman, Board, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney

Biography Royal College of Surgeons of England (livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk)

Reginald Angel Money was born in Sydney on 3 March 1897, the elder son of Dr Angel Money, MD London, FRCP, who had been assistant honorary physician at Great Ormond Street, University College Hospital and the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square, before emigrating to Australia. He was subsequently physician to Sydney Hospital and the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children in Sydney and married Amy Mona Dowdell, the daughter of a sailing ship owner in Hobart, Tasmania.

Reginald Money's early education was at Sydney Grammar School where he was captain of the school in 1913. He began his medical studies at the University of Sydney in 1914 but shortly after the outbreak of war he interrupted his course and enlisted as a gunner in the First Australian Imperial Force. He was later commissioned as Lieutenant in the Field Artillery and was awarded the Military Cross.

After demobilisation he returned to his medical studies and qualified in 1923 with first class honours, having been awarded the Mills Prize for surgery and the Sandes Prize for medicine. He served as resident medical officer, registrar and medical superintendent at Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, before being appointed assistant surgeon and tutor in surgery from 1928 to 1937. He passed the FRACS in 1931 and the FRCS in the following year. Visiting the United States at this time he was greatly inspired by the work of Dr Howard Naffziger in California, operating on the brain using the new techniques of Dr Harvey Cushing. He decided to specialise in neurosurgery and gained further experience visiting Harvey Cushing in Boston, A W Adson at the Mayo Clinic, Hugh Cairns at the London Hospital and de Martel in Paris.

In 1937 he was appointed honorary assistant surgeon and lecturer in traumatic neurosurgery at the Royal Alfred Hospital, Sydney, and in the following year was additionally honorary surgeon at the Royal North Shore Hospital. He was instrumental in setting up the first fully equipped department of neurosurgery in Australia at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1938.

Shortly after the outbreak of the second world war he again joined the services and was Colonel in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, commanding the 2nd/6th Australian General Hospital in the Middle East, Greece and Crete before returning to Northern Australia. His services were recognised by his appointment as Commander of the Order of the British Empire and the award of the Efficiency Decoration.

At the end of the war he returned to his hospital appointments in Sydney and served twice as President of the Neurosurgical Society of Australia in 1953 and 1965. He was made a director on the board of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1953 and served as Vice-Chairman from 1968 to 1973. Retiring from the active staff of the hospital he was appointed consulting neurosurgeon in 1957. His professional interests continued and from 1961 to 1969 he served as a member of the Traffic Injury Committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council of the Commonwealth of Australia. He contributed extensively to professional journals about his military and civilian experience.

Apart from his neurosurgical commitments he was interested in farming, horse-racing, tennis and golf. He married Dorothy Jean Wilkinson in 1937 and they had two daughters, Angela (Raymond) and Carole (Roussel) neither of whom has taken up medicine. Towards the end of his life when the department of neurosurgery at Prince Alfred Hospital moved from its original site to a new building, the board of the Hospital named it the R A Money department of neurosurgery in recognition of his contributions to the Hospital and to neurosurgery. He died on 16 January 1984, aged 86, survived by his wife, daughters and two grandsons.