JOHN McAuliffe Curtin - "Mac" to his family and friends the doyen of Irish ear, nose and throat surgeons, and past President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, died peacefully at home last month after a brief illness, aged 80.
Born during the Great War, he was educated at Presentation College Bray, and graduated with distinction from the RCSI in 1940. He proceeded FRCSI in 1945 and followed his father Larry into otorhinolaryngology. His long career spanned the major surgical advances beginning with the antibiotic era. With great personal charm and drive Mac enhanced the development of his chosen specialty in this country.
An early interest in amateur dramatics at the Abbey Theatre enabled him to project his ideas and innovations to a larger audience as an excellent public speaker. A keen medical historian, Mac had a long and wise perspective that benefited the hospitals and postgraduates with whom he was associated.
He became the youngest member of council at the RCSI and served for 35 years, and also had long experience on the finance committee. He was president of the college for two terms (1974-76). It is fitting that his name is commemorated on the foundation stone of the new extension, which was opened during his presidency and the registrarship of Dr Harry O'Flanagan. The college was the only medical school to expand in those recessive times in these islands.
Long before the modern requirement of consultant participation in hospital management, Mac was well versed in the financial implications of health care planning. His main hospitals, St Laurence's (the "Richmond"), the Eye & Ear, and Temple Street all benefited from his expertise.
He was a founder member and past president of the Irish Otolaryngological Society, an all-Ireland example of North-South friendship and scientific exchange, now thriving in its 37th year. He helped develop the School of Speech Therapy (now Speech & Language Studies) and the audiological departments at the Eye and Ear, Temple Street and Beaumont Hospitals. Other major achievements were in bringing a most successful British Academic Conference to Dublin in 1991, and establishing the chair in otolaryngology/head and neck Surgery at the RCSI.
Many honours came Mac's way, including governor of the American College of Surgeons, council membership of the Royal Society of Medicine, London, member of the Collegium ORLAS, and fellow of the Trilogical Society. An expert in facial nerve surgery he lectured widely in the US, the Middle East and Japan. He was adviser both at home and abroad on the development of ENT services.
International in outlook, Mac invited the most outstanding otolaryngologists to lecture here, and together with his wife Maeve an anaesthetist (who predeceased him two years ago) entertained their visitors and Irish colleagues in their home with wonderful warmth and hospitality. Their large family of six daughters were a great source of joy to Mac and Maeve, and their careers include nursing, dentistry, administration, law and medicine.
Mac will be remembered with affection for his warm personality sense of humour, and interest in people by his friends and patients together with the many postgraduates he encouraged and trained.
Though retired from surgery, he continued in medicolegal practice, and on the council of the Eye and Ear. Happily Mac lived to celebrate the centenary of that hospital, where his daughter Denise is a consultant ophthalmologist. One of the last meetings he attended was the annual meeting of the Eye and Ear held at the Mansion House, to commemorate the first one held there in 1897.
An English colleague who sat beside him on the plane to London remarked afterwards to Mac: "What a delightful travelling companion!" He was that indeed, and a great, example of someone who loved life, lived it to the full and right to the end. Deepest sympathy to his family.