Annals of Clinical and Medical Case Reports Historical Study

Springsure Hospital 1864-1939: The Original Springsure Hospital and the Doctors and Diseases, 2020

Abstract The original Springsure Hospital in central Queensland, Australia, was opened over a hundred and fifty years ago. It is now a museum following the subsequent construction of two consecutive modern replacement hospitals. The back-ground history and the doctors and treated diseases are presented. Some of the challenges faced would not be expected by today’s hospital staff!

2014

 The main medicopolitical struggle was with the mutualaid friendly societies, which funded basic medical care for a signifi cant proportion of the population until well into the 20th century. The organised profession set out to overcome the power of the lay-controlled societies in imposing an unacceptable contract system on doctors, even if, historically, the guaranteed income was a sine qua non of practice in poorer areas. In this supplement, all the articles except this one focus on the period from about 1900, when modern scientifi c medicine came into its own in Australia. Here, I provide an overview of medicine in colonial Australia, as well as background to the post-1900 articles. For reasons of space, I confi ne my account of the period after about 1850 to the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, where the new university medical schools were located. I do not cover psychiatry because in the period under consideration it was almost exclusively practised i...

1994

2008

ANZ Journal of Surgery, 2009

Zeehan Hospital, Zeehan, Tasmania. The First Forty Years, During The Mining Boom 1894-1934 The Curious Case of the Missing Lead Poisoning, 2021

1. Abstract The clinical details of the patients admitted to the Zeehan Hospital in Tasmania, Australia from the opening date of the hospital in 1894 for the subsequent forty years during the peak of the mining period in Zeehan are presented. Major features are the frequent but uncompensated industrial fatalities and accidents, outbreaks of infectious diseases in the pre-antibiotic era and the damage to individuals and the environment from severe metal pollution, yet an apparent silence about the issue of clinical lead poisoning.

History of Psychiatry, 2018

Very little has been published on the rise and fall of psychosurgery in Australia. In the mid-twentieth century, Western Australia was the largest but most sparsely-populated of the six Australian States, and its local psychiatry practice was, as one commentator put it, 'backward'. Nonetheless, electroconvulsive therapy was introduced in 1945, and leucotomy in 1947. This paper will explore the introduction of leucotomy to Western Australia in the context of wider national and international trends in psychiatry, and posit some reasons for its decline and abandonment in the 1970s. It will present a narrative reconstruction of the local introduction and practice of leucotomy, using retrieved, reconstructed and previously unpublished data.

Health and history, 2008

In this article the Queensland government's response to suspected and confirmed cases of venereal disease amongst the state's Aboriginal population is examined through the micro history of Fantome Island lock hospital, which operated between 1928 and 1945. This history offers an interesting case study into the complexities of medical and racial segregation in twentieth century Queensland. While other scholars have positioned Fantome Island lock hospital as a justifiable attempt to control syphilis and gonorrhoea infections amongst the Queensland Aboriginal population, I propose a different interpretation and argue that white perceptions of Aboriginal sexuality and health contributed to government depictions of an Aboriginal venereal disease 'epidemic.' I demonstrate that disease diagnosis was still highly problematic prior to World War II and was differentially applied across different sub-populations.

ANZ Journal of Surgery, 2007

A Master Plan for Royal Prince Alfred Hospital was published in 1873 following several years of expressed need. Britain would not fund the development so a subscription was raised from the community. However funds were insufficient to complete the development in one sequence. So the hospital was constructed in phases over twenty four years; by which time much had changed: the settlement of Sydney and of course in technology.