NAME: MARION KING BENNIE CAMERON (WHYTE)

QUALIFICATIONS:
MB, CHB, UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO (1918)
DA, ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS AND PHYSICIANS (1939)
FFARACS (1954)

DATE OF BIRTH: 1895
DATE OF DEATH: 17 SEPTEMBER 1983

Marion King Bennie Whyte was born in Glasgow in 1895. Her family migrated to Aotearoa New Zealand towards the end of her primary school, and she was completed her education at Napier High School and Otago Girls’ High School. She was dux of the school, and awarded a New Zealand University scholarship.

Whyte studied medicine at the University of Otago, graduating in 1918 and, shortly after, setting up in general practice. In 1927 she visited the USA and England, learning detailed techniques of gas and oxygen anaesthesia. She was one of the first to use endotracheal intubation and supportive intravenous fluids in New Zealand.

Her obituary, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, described her as an anaesthetist whose career “stretched from chloroform – kitchen table era through to the complexity of modern anaesthetics for neuro- and thoracic surgery”.

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