History – Page 2

Emily Siedeberg, New Zealand’s first woman doctor

3 April 2017 Leave a Comment

Barbara Brookes

The question of the propriety of teaching women medical students first came before the medical staff at Dunedin hospital in 1891. If the decision had been left to them, Emily Siedeberg, New Zealand’s first woman doctor, might well have not been able to pursue her chosen field. Having been admitted to study medicine at the University of Otago, Emily Siedeberg wrote to the Trustees of the hospital to enquire if there was any objection to her attending the hospital as a medical student. The trustees canvassed the opinions of the hospital staff who sent their responses in writing.

Reflections from the Medical School graduating class of 1971.

20 March 2017 2 Comments

Charlotte Paul and Sarah Romans

You young women are taking the place of a man.”

Click here to view full size 1968 class photo

In 1971, seventeen women were among the 120 graduates in medicine at the University of Otago. 44 years later, fifteen of the sixteen who were still alive wrote brief life stories, and in November 2015 fourteen of us met for a three day reunion. The naysayers were wrong: we had all practised medicine for many years, with just one giving up after thirty years to pursue other interests, and none of us regretted having chosen a medical career. Three had retired in the last few years but the rest were still practising, aged 67 or older. What follows are insights gleaned from this group of women, as we reflected on the time before we started university, our time together at Medical School, and our lives as medical practitioners. We also reflected on the process of meeting again, nearly fifty years after entering Medical School, and we now offer some insights to our successors, the women studying medicine today.

On rabies

13 March 2017 1 Comment

Dr Anna Holmes

I first encountered rabies in Trincomalee, Ceylon, in 1947. The father of one of my friends at school died suddenly. I remember sitting quietly while the adults talked in hushed voices about “hydrophobia” and how “their throats close up when they want to drink”. The other thing they said was “The treatment is ten days of injections into the tummy”. I felt sad for my friend and her family, and anxious at the thought of ten injections – I loathed being stuck with needles. I was also upset that the puppy, which our mother had found for us, was sent away. In those days there was no immunisation for dogs.

Later, at medical school in Edinburgh, we were told about rabies and what a scourge it was in many parts of the world. The treatment was serial injections with immunoglobulin as soon as possible after infection.

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Johann Remmelin: a story of a 17th century anatomy flap book

6 March 2017 2 Comments

Dr Katherine Hall

In 1613, Johann Remmelin (1583-1632) published the first edition of his anatomy flap book. A 1667 edition, printed from the same printer blocks as the first, is held in the Health Sciences Library at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Recently, with colleagues Dr Simone Marshall and K. John Dennison, I had the opportunity to study it closely.

Would you like some gunpowder with that wound care, Sir?

27 February 2017 Leave a Comment

Sue Wootton

Rabies is a viral disease causing inflammation of the brain. Its symptoms include agitated mood and body movements, partial paralysis and hydrophobia (fear of water). Suffering is intense, and even in the twenty-first century the prognosis for an infected person is poor. Fortunately there are effective vaccines, the first of which was produced in 1885 by Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux.

Island of shame

20 February 2017

Barbara Brookes

Boys diseased in body, and sullied in soul, lost forever as builders of our country” – Mrs Harrison Lee Cowie, in Ashburton Guardian, 8 June, 1917

Mrs Cowie, of the ‘Strength of the Nation’ movement, was referring to boys being held at Quarantine Island (Kamau Taurua) in Otago harbour (Dunedin, New Zealand). At least Mrs Cowie ventured to discuss the subject in public. When the New Zealand House of Representatives were to debate the war regulations relating to venereal disease in July 1916, women were asked to leave the public galleries. Such an indelicate subject was not one for their ears. By this time, ninety soldiers were already ‘segregated on a certain quarantine station’. Proclaiming that he was not the ‘Minister of Morals but the Minister of Health’, George Russell sought measures to prevent the spread of the disease be believed to be ‘rampant’, spread ‘in lavatories, privies, and barbers’ shops, by the use of towels, the kissing of children, the smoking of infected pipes, and in other ways’.

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