Archibald Edward Malloch

Malloch, Archibald Edward

Archibald Edward Malloch, surgeon (b at Brockville, Canada W 14 June 1844; d at Hamilton, Ont 6 Aug 1919). Educated at Queen's and at the University of Glasgow, where he graduated in 1867, he served as house surgeon for Joseph Lister when the latter was beginning to publish accounts of antiseptic surgery. Malloch became a firm believer in the method and, after his return to Canada in 1869, was likely the first in the country to use it in its fully developed form. One of his first patients operated on under antiseptic conditions in Hamilton was his own father, George Malloch.

A skilful surgeon, he was not prominent outside medicine, nor was he active in medical circles outside his practice in Hamilton. His only formal relationship with an established medical school - as professor of anatomy at Victoria College, Toronto - lasted less than 2 years, though he did attempt to create a school in Hamilton along with 3 colleagues as early as 1869. He was not as vociferous an advocate of antiseptic surgery as he might have been. By the 1890s, however, most Canadian surgeons were using antisepsis or its successor, asepsis.