George Cleghorn

George Cleghorn was a nineteenth century physician and surgeon in New Zealand, born in Calcutta on 1 September 1850 and educated in England, where he qualified at St Thomas's Hospital in London. He reached Auckland in 1876 and by 1878 was in private practice and operating at the newly opened Wairau Hospital in Blenheim. There he introduced the sterilization of surgical instruments in the spirit of Pasteur and Lister, performed the first recorded appendicectomy in New Zealand, set up an isolated fever ward used in the 1899 typhoid outbreak, and operated on the prime minister John Ballance. He argued for better care of mentally ill patients and for Maori people to be treated in a local hospital, and he gave his skill freely to those who could not pay. He was president of the New Zealand Medical Association in 1897 and died on 11 June 1902.