Victor Bonney

Vocation

British gynaecological surgeon, both his father and his paternal grandfather were family doctors. He became famous among colleagues for his extraordinary performance of 500 Wertheim radical extended hysterectomy operations for cancer of the cervix and, secondly, for his development of the conservative operations of myomectomy and ovarian cystectomy. His radical hysterectomy saved the lives of many women who would otherwise have died from painful and debilitating cancer of the cervix; and his conservative operations preserved the fertility of many women who would otherwise have been childless. His motivation for the development of the second type of operation was the experience of his wife Annie, who became grossly anaemic from heavy menstrual periods and underwent a hysterectomy, the only treatment then known. So within two years of marriage she was made sterile. Ten days after the operation Annie's bowel obstructed. A great surgeon Bland Sutton dealt with that. Bonney inevitably became interested in conservative surgery and in bowel function after major surgery; so in the end he developed not only the operation of myomectomy to remove fibroids and conserve the uterus, but also ovarian cystectomy to remove non-malignant cysts while conserving ovaries. He was very much against the establishment of a College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which is now the Royal College, holding that both gynaecology and (somewhat illogically) obstetrics were branches of surgery. Outside medicine Bonney's great hero was Rudyard Kipling, who was his friend. His hobbies were dancing, in which he and his wife excelled, painting water-colours and fishing which he managed to do in rivers all over the world but in particular at Seabournes, his country home on the beautiful River Wye in Hereford. He died on 4 July 1953. (Text partly quoted from biography review by Elliot E Philipp)