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The story is set in the city of Melbourne in the latter half of the 19th century, when it was growing rapidly, due to the gold flowing from Ballarat and Bendigo in mid-Victoria. It concerns Dr James Beaney, a very colourful and controversial surgeon, who amassed a fortune from his practice, and displayed it in the jewellery he wore, the mansion he had built (which still exists today) and in his social life. He was, however, a generous benefactor to the Melbourne University and hospitals in Melbourne, as well as to his birthplace, the city of Canterbury in Kent.
Having weathered two harrowing court cases a decade before, Beaney, shortly after his re-appointment to the Melbourne Hospital in 1875, was implicated in another court case following the death of a patient he had operated on for a large bladder stone. Unwisely he had a facsimile of the stone made and placed in the window of a Collins Street book shop. An inquest was called for following correspondence in the press, particularly one letter from an unknown surgeon, which was highly critical of Beaney. The inquest is outlined in considerable detail and the skill displayed by James Purves, the brilliant young barrister who defended him, will be evident to the reader.
Brian T. Collopy graduated M.B.B.S. Melbourne and holds Fellowships of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators. He is a past Director of the Department of Colon and Rectal Surgery at St. Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne and Associate Professor of Surgery at Melbourne University. He has had a long-standing interest in the assessment of the quality of care and with the award of a Kellogg Fellowship, and subsequently a WHO consultancy, he studied and advised on health care practices in Europe and Asia, as well as North America. He has conducted numerous studies addressing the quality of care at the hospital, inter-hospital and national levels, has authored or co-authored over 150 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, and has spoken extensively on the subject. Amongst a variety of roles in relation to the quality of health care he was President of the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS), which conducts a national hospital accreditation program. With ACHS he developed clinical performance measures, which are now used in a number of other countries, and provide the ACHS with a unique national clinical database. Other offices include being Chairman of the Advisory Council of the International Society of Quality Assurance (ISQua) and the Advisory Committee on Elective Surgery (ACES) in Victoria. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1993 and received a Fellowship of the Australian Medical Association in 1996. Currently he is the Director of CQM Consultants, formed to assist health care organisations to assess the quality of their care. In this capacity he has guided tertiary referral hospitals on performance measurement and assisted organisations such as the Department of Health in South Australia, the Royal Flying Doctor Service, Correctional Health Services, and New South Wales Mental Health. He has also assisted the Hong Kong Hospital Authority to develop clinical performance measures. He has just retired from membership of the Victorian Civil & Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), but continues as a Clinical Advisor to the ACHS and as a member of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal (SCT). A number of his activities, such as the clinical indicator development for hospital accreditation, a follow-up protocol after bowel cancer surgery, and the categorisation of urgency for elective surgery waiting list patients, were world-first achievements.
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