Arnold Mann MB BS FRCS (Eng) FRACS

is a Member of the Academy of Forensic Sciences

A graduate of the University of Melbourne he carried off the Ryan Prizes in Medicine and Surgery in his final year.

He has had a varied and interesting surgical career during the second half of the 20th century, when momentous advances were made in the control of infection, drug treatment, anaesthesia and surgery.   He recalls the fascination he experienced watching a heart operation, when cardiac surgery was in its infancy.

Formerly Tutor in Surgery at the University of Melbourne and  later, Director of the Surgical Unit at Canberra Hospitals he was appointed an International Visiting Professor of Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, USA in 1978.  His interests are now directed to improving surgical standards.

He is the author of two medicolegal textbooks.  One, devoted to the assessment of the causes of injuries from work and accidents and the resulting disability.  It ran through four Australian and one American edition. 

The second textbook was devoted to the setting of standards by reviewing over 400 cases which were reviewed by the Courts, sorting out those where the standards had been achieved from those in which that did not occur.

The second textbook has been updated mainly by the addition of many more case studies which have come to the author’s attention.

He is careful in expressing opinions about tragedies occurring in the course of treatment, and separates these cases in which the standards were met, from those where, in his opinion, they were not.  He has been called to justify his opinion in Court in only around 20 of the 772 cases in which he offered an opinion, and in the majority of this small group, his view was accepted by the Court.

For relaxation he plays chess, is fond of literature, the arts, theatre and the ballet.  He played for his school tennis team, but sport has never been his forte.