Arthur Edward Mills becomes the fourth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in 1920
From Faculty of Medicine Online Museum and Archive
Professor Arthur Edward Mills became the fourth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the end of 1920 when Professor James Thomas Wilson resigned to go to Cambridge. The appointment of a Sydney graduate, the son of Australian born parents, marked the fulfilment of the founders' dream of establishing an independent academic tradition in Australia. Mills held the position of Dean from 1920 until 1925. In his undergraduate years, Mills studied medicine at the University of Sydney in one of the first three intakes into the Medical School, graduating in minimum time in 1889 with honours in ten subjects. He was appointed to the resident staff of Prince Alfred Hospital as one of the first four Sydney University graduates in the same year. He was the first graduate of the University to be appointed to the staff of the Medical School as Demonstrator in Anatomy and Physiology between 1890 and 1891. Mills worked in private practice for some years in Picton and Strathfield, by 1910 becoming a consultant physician in Macquarie Street. Mills was greatly interested in paediatrics and was appointed the University lecturer in Diseases of Children in 1901. He became a lecturer in the Principles and Practice of Medicine in 1910 and Professor in 1920, the first clinical appointment ever made by the University at a professorial level. His teaching style can now be seen to have been ahead of its time, as his method was to work backwards from the symptoms to the cause as the best approach to understanding disease.[1]
- Next article in timeline: Broughton Hall Psychiatric Clinic becomes a teaching hospital in 1921
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