Samuel Henry Harris

Samuel Henry Harris, always known as Harry, was an Australian urological surgeon who lived from 1881 to 1936. Born in Sydney, he was educated at Sydney Grammar School and the University of Sydney, where he graduated in medicine in 1906, and he began in general practice before turning to gynaecology and then to the newly emerging speciality of urology, after the cystoscopic and radiographic studies for his 1914 thesis on ureteral catheterisation in obstetrics. He did most of his surgery at Lewisham Hospital in Sydney. His reputation rests on the Harris prostatectomy, a modification of suprapubic prostatectomy that allowed primary closure of the bladder, for which he reported a mortality of 2.7 percent across 413 operations in 1934. He designed a lighted bladder retractor and other instruments, and in 1935 he visited Britain to demonstrate the method. Other surgeons found his results hard to reproduce, and the Australian Dictionary of Biography concludes that his surgical skill, more than the technique itself, explained his success. He died in December 1936.