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History
The Birth of BAUS
At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, every surgeon who could be spared went off to the services, but very soon the casualties of the Blitz obliged the Navy to return Howard Hanley and other back to civilian life where there was no time to stand on ceremony or keep to any narrow specialty. Throughout the war plans were being made for a National Health Service.
Fortunately there were a few men with imagination and vision, and it was their action which led to the foundation of BAUS and the formation of the Institute of Urology.
It might be thought somewhat curious that there had been no previous British Association for the urologists; all all the French Urological Association had been founded as early as 1896 with Guyon as first President and the Belgian Association in 1901, the year that an Association of Urology was founded in New York, which became the American Urological Association in 1902.
An International Assocaition of Urology had been started in 1907, with its first meeting in Paris in 1908 and the second in London in 1911 with Hurry Fenwick as its President. After the war, this became the Société Internationale d'Urologie and Hurry Fenwick was President of Honour.
One factor in the tardy formation of BAUS, certainly so far as London and the South of England was concerned, was that a perfectly good organisation was already in existence - The Royal Society of Medicine. The long-standing Medico-Chirurgical Society was formed in 1805 as a breakaway from the Medical Society of London. The leading lights were at Blizard, Abernethy, Astley Cooper and James Yelloly: the new society flourished and received a Royal Charter in 1834 as The Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London. In 1907 it merged with other smaller specialist societies, who separate independence was guaranteed with the status of a ‘section’ within the larger entity, renamed The Royal Society of medicine.
One of the reasons why there seemed no need for a new Association for urologists may have been a strong influence in the RSM, whose second President was Sir Henry Morris, the pioneer of renal surgery. Another stronger reason was the English opposition to sub-specialisation within surgery.
The Section of Urology at The Royal Society of Medicine held its first meeting on March 17th 1920 with Sir Peter Freyer as its first President. Freyer pointed out that the decision to establish a separate section of urology, rather than a subsection of surgery marked "a distinct and healthy advance in the attitude of the surgical world in England and particularly in London, which til recently had looked askance at the idea of Urology being a distinct specialty, though this specialty had long been recognised in, I may say, every other country”.
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