Due to space constraints, we were unable to include this letter in our December 2007 Director’s Circular (Mailing 249), so are making it available here.

Hungerford Encomium Epistle

By Bill Howey
Former Director of The PGF

21st. March 1974

Mrs. Mace Bain
297 New England Highway
SCONE NSW 2337

Dear Mace,

Yesterday, at the Presbyterian Church at Scone, I thought what a mighty tribute it was to Murray. The assemblage of people from far and near, with such a great number who had come specially 350 miles return form Sydney to honour him, passed off like ‘a glorious roll of drums’ to mark his outstanding career.

The Church filled 10 minutes before the service, extra seating was brought in, and then there was an overflow of people. These were from hundreds of miles away, busy practitioners, academic leaders with a full life, business men under stress of time, and so on. It portrayed the honour and esteem felt for this leader of the profession, as an outstanding horse and cattle veterinarian, and as a great man.

I did not include your family circle, but thought I would write to express my deepest sympathy to you, and Morag and Fiona.

Twenty years from now, the thought crosses my mind – will the children of Morag and Fiona wonder about their unknown grandfather. I know I do about mine, Thomas Hungerford, a pioneer at Baerami Creek, three times a member of parliament – quite a man, died twenty years before I was born, and I would desperately like to hear an appraisal of him by his colleagues – fellow graziers, fellow members of parliament, and soon, who knew him as the leader he was.

With this in mind, I thought I would write a letter at length about Murray which, with the splendid write-up in the ‘Herald’ and the write-up which will no doubt appear in the Australian Veterinary Journal, can be placed amongst the papers with the information for Murray’s descendants. If this seems silly, just waste-paper-basket this letter, and no harm done.

Murray Bain only entered the veterinary scene here about 1950, and yet from 1950 to 1974, he had such an impact that when the saga of veterinary science in Australia is told, he will always have a high place in it. He is one of the great clinicians – perhaps the greatest.

I commenced veterinary science in 1930. For 50 years before this was the era of the equine veterinarian, proverbial for precise, accurate, detailed, clinical observation and acumen. So much that an idiom of the English language was coined – thus ‘to vet’ something, means to scrutinize it and check it over with absolute perception. From 1930 onwards, this great habit and precision was almost lost to the veterinarians as they drifted away from the horse era. There were several from1930 to 1950 who specialized in horses, but from 1950 onwards, there came one – Murray Bain – a Scotsman, in the full tradition of the acute, shrewd, and discerning veterinary surgeons of old.

His nature was balanced, kindly, and dour. His motivation was that of compassion, of ‘caring’, and of concentration of the task in hand. His background was that of the discipline of the Army, of learning from the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College, Edinburgh, and of greatness of character inherited from his Scots forebears. He was nobody’s fool. He was a leader who would take charge of every trainer and every owner, to guide and motivate their thoughts, to direct their attentions, and to guide them in the paths of action which they should take in their own interests, and in that of their horses.

He was a clinician wrapped in his subject, wise in experience, profiting from the contact with his fellow professionals to a maximal extent, perceptive in diagnosis, and unfailingly wise in advice. As I heard another great clinician at the funeral (a winner of the Gilruth award¹) say, ‘Murray was quite a bloke’. In the context of the terminology used, this was the highest praise that one Australian can give another, and Murray, though a Scotsman, was truly an Australian, having adopted the best traditions of both cultures and races. He adorned them both.

As a veterinarian, he was outstanding amongst his fellows in that he thought individually, and failed to limp in futile imitation of others. He pioneered new approaches in everything he touched (things such as regarding worm infestations as the cause of foal pneumonia² and equine colics³. and other revolutionary concepts, which are invariably proved right, or partly right). Not only was he a great veterinarian, he was a great teacher.

Seldom is a practitioner and clinician able to break into the teaching of his fellows in the profession. Murray was sought after by the Australian Veterinary Association, by the Post-Graduate Committee of the University of Sydney, by the Faculty of Veterinary Science, and by similar organizations in places other than New South Wales⁴. His impact through lectures and articles in New Zealand and in Australia, and through the veterinary journals, was strategic and impressive.

I recall being invited with Murray to lecture to the final year students in veterinary science at Sydney University on ‘The Successful Running of Mixed Practice’. Murray was speaking on ‘The Successful Running of Equine Practice’. I gave my lecture and then sat down to listen, charmed by such an exposition of how to run an equine practice as I had never dreamed of hearing. I, as a fellow lecturer, became the student at his feet, and plagued him with questions as much as all the rest of the students for more than on hour at the end of his lecture. He was a maestro.

One of the great features of his outstanding capacity, knowledge and acumen, was his overriding humility. They say, ‘A man wrapped up in himself makes a very little bundle’. Murray was a great man. Never did littleness or any taint of being ‘wrapped up in himself’ mar the great picture of his character and stature.

I feel that every colleague who worked with him in his practice, every member of the New South Wales Veterinary Association, who heard and watched him at demonstrations, is the great gainer. The gain is not only in knowledge and know-how, but in attitude and approach.

Murray adorned our profession in that he lifted its ethical standard, he lifted its image in the eyes of the public and he gained the love and respect of every client to whom he rendered service.

Research men can be honoured with doctorates, academics with a professorship, and there are noteworthy awards for all except the clinician. The clinician/practitioner is the man who determines the esteem of the profession in the eyes of the public, and if we could have only 10% of practitioners as noble as Murray, then the standard of our profession would steadily rise.

The write-up in the ‘Herald’is a beautiful little ‘cameo’ of his life but is necessarily inadequate. The few remarks made by the Minister at his funeral service were only a small fraction of that which was being said by his colleagues for the next half hour outside. Taken altogether, the truths spoken would compound into a picture of one of the outstanding men that has graced the veterinary profession.

We think of men like Max Henry, Gilruth, Ian Clunies-Ross, Seddon, Bull, and perhaps five or six ‘greats’⁵, and Murray’s name will join this list as one who has stabilized and uplifted veterinary practice in the second half of the 20th Century.

He has presented a vision of service to his fellow man of care and help to horses and animals he loved, and of value to the Australian nation that he adopted.

Mace, no great man can make the grade without the support of his wife, and you can take great credit as you look back on this professional pageant of triumph. Morag and Fiona can look back with a flow of pride and appreciation on this their father, a leader in his profession.

May God’s grace and comfort enfold each one of the three of you.

Very sincerely yours,

Tom G. Hungerford
T. G. Hungerford

1. The Gilruth Award is one of the most prestigious granted by the Australian Veterinary Association. The speaker was almost certainly pre-eminent veterinarian V. G. (‘Victor’) Cole who was associated and promoted by (Sir) Ian Clunies Ross early in his career. Vic and Murray were very close friends and professional colleagues. Tom, Murray and Vic were the prescient driving force behind the formation of the Post Graduate Foundation in Veterinary Science of the University of Sydney. I fell immensely privileged to have enjoyed the benefits of a very close association with all of them and to have followed Tom – eventually – as third Director of the PGFVS. According to a story promulgated by Vic, Bill Rose’s mother-in-law was the only person to momentarily divert Murray’s passion for the PGFVS!
   
   
2. This referred to a seminal paper published in the New Zealand Veterinary Journal where migrating Habronema larvae were demonstrated to be closely associated with severe lung pathology and the development of acute ‘Rattles’ Corynebacterium equi, Rhodococcus equi in a young foal.
   
   
3. Murray was a great advocate of the work of Glasgow Veterinary Parasitologist and researcher Dr. Jim Duncan who unravelled the arcane trammels of the migration of Large Redworm (Strongylus vulgaris) larvae throughout the horse’s body.
   
   
4. Murray spoke at the British Veterinary Association Conference in Edinburgh in 1965 which is when I first heard of him and sowed the seed for what was to become my journey in life. I attended as an impecunious final year undergraduate student. His paper was entitled ‘The Role of Infection in Infertility in Thoroughbred Broodmares’ and planted the name Scone, Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia firmly on the International Map of Veterinary Science.
   
   
5. Tom very modestly omits his name from this list. It would probably rank second in the pantheon.

*  The letterhead: Lord Hungerford's name will be found as a signatory with King John in the Magna Carta. In the Battle of Agincourt a Hungerford rescued the Black Knight and won the right to put the Ducal Coronets in the family coat of arms, the only Baronet to hold that right. (Information courtesy of Doug Bryden.)