Sir Henry McIlltree Williamson Gray (1870–1938) was a Scottish surgeon who made very important contributions to the treatment of wounded soldiers during the First World War.
[5] In the intervening years leading up to the war, he established himself as a surgeon of outstanding ability who set himself very high standards and expected others in his team to follow suit.
[7] During the First World War, Gray served in France for three and a half years, at first in charge of a group of base hospitals in Rouen, then from 1917 as Consulting Surgeon to the British Third Army.
Patients reached casualty clearing stations in good clinical condition and fit to undergo limb and life saving surgery.
Only 5% of patients reached casualty clearing stations in clinical shock due to blood loss and unfit for surgery.
If the patient already had gangrene, then he could only be saved by excision of all dead tissue, although even then he might die from multiple organ failure caused by release of powerful toxins.
He was offered, and accepted, the position of Surgeon-in-Chief to the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) in Montreal, but when he went to Canada he became involved in bitter political infighting between Sir Arthur Currie, Principal and Vice-chancellor of McGill University and Sir Henry Vincent Meredith, President of the RVH, over the issue of whether Gray should be offered the Chair of Surgery at McGill University.