John Halliday (ophthalmologist)

John Charles White Halliday (1871 to 1946) was an Australian ophthalmologist who popularised intracapsular cataract extraction in Sydney. The youngest of eight children of a Bathurst family, he graduated Bachelor of Medicine and Chirurgery at the University of Sydney in 1896, studied ophthalmology in England in 1898 and 1899, and began special practice in Macquarie Street in 1901. He became clinical assistant in ophthalmology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and later honorary ophthalmic surgeon there for eleven years from 1920, and travelled to Amritsar in India to learn intracapsular cataract extraction under Lieutenant Colonel Henry Smith. He also consulted for several children's institutions, held fellowships of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, and helped establish the Medical Eye Service Clinic in 1934.