Obituaries Australia

Last year saw the passing of a most significant person in the development of anaesthesia in Australia and New Zealand. Although John Uhlir was not a medical graduate, nor an Australian or New Zealander by birth, his influence over the specialty in both countries, as well as South East Asia and Oceania, was remarkable.

John was born in Austria and was nine years old when Hitler’s annexation (the Anschluss) incorporated Austria into “Greater Germany”. As the child of a Jewish father and Catholic mother, John was amongst the first targets of Austrian Nazis, seeking to outdo their German cousins. In his case, expulsion from school was the principal outcome.

In a bizarre reversal of events, a decree of the Führer directed that “half-Jewish” children could be allowed a partial education, so within 18 months John was back in school and an involuntary member of the Hitler Youth, then an automatic enrolment for every schoolchild. As the war dragged on and German fortunes waned, life became more dangerous, and as John’s 16th birthday approached he was in serious danger of being drafted to the Russian Front. Hitler’s suicide and Germany’s surrender saved him from that fate, only to be replaced by the struggle for survival in postwar occupation by the Allies.

At 15, John had been obliged to leave school, his parentage denying him the right to complete secondary education, but he could and did enter an apprenticeship in metalworking which played a large part in shaping his subsequent life and career.

The convoluted path which led to his migration to Australia resembled that of many European refugees, and on arrival he was subject to the current compulsory two-year period of workplace direction by the government. This involved a number of employers, all of them loosely related to metal and plastics fabrication, techniques which John’s agile brain absorbed until eventually he felt able to venture into business on his own.

Such was his versatility that he was able to accept small volume contracts for a wide variety of products and components, in which larger companies were not interested. His premises were in Marrickville, Sydney, not all that far from Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, where he first made the acquaintance of the anaesthetic community.

Their representative was Dr Duncan Campbell, himself an immigrant, who, as a recently arrived staff specialist, was made responsible for bringing some order into the department’s equipment infrastructure. As a result, Duncan formed the view that in-theatre storage of anaesthetic agents needed reform and on paper he designed a tray which would accommodate the then fairly limited range of drugs in daily use.

The number of trays needed was quite small by commercial standards and by good luck, Duncan discovered John’s business – whether by word or mouth of the Pink Pages is not clear – where he received a polite welcome and an agreement to fabricate the drug tray.

There can not have been much in it for John Uhlir, but a dramatic development was to come when Duncan brought his ideas for a ventilator to Ulco (as the business had now become). The original undertaking was to make one prototype, although John actually made two. After the machine had performed to Duncan’s satisfaction, John sent the second one to Brisbane for display at a Society of Anaesthetists Annual General Meeting.

There it caught the attention of Dr Ted Morgan, then in the throes of attempting to equip a new suite of theatres at Royal North Shore Hospital on an inadequate budget. The Children’s Hospital at Camperdown was also interested and John found himself obliged to quote within a week for a dozen ventilators when he had done no costing whatsoever. More or less plucking a figure out of the air, he had chosen a very competitive price and the Campbell Ventilator was launched.

Its subsequent success was almost legendary. Nearly 3000 were sold and many early models continue to function to this day. Even when the fluidic technology which was the heart of the device ceased to be produced by its sole manufacturer in the United States, John and his staff were equal to the task of converting Duncan’s invention to electronic operation, almost without interruption.

Such was Ulco’s reputation in the specialty that when John and Andy Roussos decided to launch a floor-model anaesthetic machine, it too received a warm welcome. The relatively limited production run for such apparatus was no drawback to John; he had been doing business along these lines from the beginning.

Eventually, John decided it was time to retire and by the end of 2003, Ulco had been sold. Some time later, having in the meantime enjoyed visiting family and friends in Europe and the United Kingdom, John was found to have inoperable lung cancer during a routine check-up prior to carotid arterial surgery. Chemotherapy produced a brief remission, but eventually cerebral metastases brought an end to the distinguished life of a fine, friendly and talented man. He is survived by Elizabeth, his wife of 25 years. There were no children.