Over the next 15 years Murdoch invented numerous permutations of the disposable syringe: disposable sterile pre-filled hypodermic syringes, prepared ampoule-type moulded plastic syringe darts, disposable automatic vaccinator syringes, sterile self-filling syringes for blood samples, variable dose vaccinator syringes and wet and dry disposable syringes. He was 27, in 1956, when he took out his first patent. The idea came to Murdoch while he was in his mid-20s during a DC3 flight between the North and South Islands: a disposable, pre-filled vaccination syringe. Instead of now having to care for, and contain, the several million infected people throughout the world who have AIDS, the numbers could well be 30 or 40 percent of the entire population.” Diseases of such ultimate incurability and virulence as the HIV and AIDS virus, hepatitis A, B, C and most recently a new D form… and TB to name just a few. “It is impossible to comprehend the catastrophic consequences of this situation if such practices were still occurring today. “Dangerous bacteria and viruses were transferred from one patient to another by doctors who used improperly sterilised reusable glass hypodermic syringes and needles to inject other patients.”
Behind the invention was also a concern about human-borne diseases, as Murdoch told Bob Riley for the book Kiwi Ingenuity – A Book of New Zealand Ideas and Inventions in 1993: His first work towards inventing a new syringe came about through trying to build a more effective vaccinator for animals. Much of his life’s work has alternated between the two professions.ĭesign drawings for Murdoch’s wet/dry syringe He soon found that with his background in science and pharmaceuticals the community was demanding a related, but distant, service from him – that of veterinarian. It was a few years after the end of World War II and highly skilled people were in short supply in New Zealand, especially in rural areas. Murdoch left school and trained as a pharmacist, the same profession as his father. At the age of 13 he owned and drove a Morris Oxford Tourer (the law required a licence, but no one else seemed to mind the underage driver) at the same age he was awarded the Royal Humane Society Medal for saving a drowning man in the New Brighton estuary.
#DEEP DREAMER MURDOCH TANZER FREE#
It was an uncluttered and free childhood in the wide open spaces of 1940s Canterbury. Despite studying firearms all his life, Murdoch says he has never seen another gun that works on the same principle. The gun worked and he spent many afternoons hunting rabbits and hares with the homemade weapon. With this knowledge he built a firearm using a wick and a small, asbestos-filled hammer. He was ambidextrous and dyslexic the latter, he told the Timaru Herald in 1995, made school a struggle, but he outgrew the condition in later life.ĭespite the problems he faced in the schoolroom, Murdoch had a natural aptitude for chemistry as well as displaying technical and mechanical skills, even if his inventions at the time were the sorts of things a mother may dread, such as his early, successful, attempt at making gunpowder.Īt the age of 10 he made the discovery that mixing certain nitrates with sulphuric acid would cause an ignition. Colin Murdoch gives the wild west a rest, perched on a successfully subdued water buffalo Making An Early ImpressionĬolin Murdoch was born in Christchurch in 1929.
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