Claire Macindoe
In 1939, a thirteen year old boy called Roger Kingsford was admitted to Nelson Hospital with osteomyelitis, a septic infection of the bone in his right leg. The infection was non-responsive to sulphonamides, the only antibiotic treatment available at the time. Despite a preventative amputation, the infection spread and Roger developed osteomyelitis in his right arm and left leg. During the next few years he became chronically and seriously ill. In the early 1940s, after hearing reports about a new drug which was being successfully used to treat bacterial infections in soldiers, Roger’s parents appealed to the New Zealand government for access to penicillin.
[Read more…] about The ‘Miracle Drug’: penicillin’s first use in New Zealand
June Opie was twenty-three when she contracted polio on her way to England from New Zealand in 1947. She spent two years in a London hospital, where she initially had no friends or family. Against terrible odds, June recovered from full-body paralysis and learned to walk again, albeit on crutches and with both legs in callipers. Her autobiography, Over My Dead Body, was published in 1957. It became an international best-seller in just ten days.