Illness in Colonial Australia

Illness in Colonial Australia
Author/editor: Professor Barry Smith
Publisher: Australian Scholarly Publishing, Kew, Victoria
Year published: 2011
School/Centre: School of History

Abstract

Illness in Colonial Australia is an innovative, richly researched study of the impact of the age-old afflictions the settlers carried and their efforts to cope with them.

The Aboriginal inhabitants suffered terribly from the new diseases.  They lacked inherited immunities and were particularly damaged by the new foods and animals, alcohol and weapons, curtailed access to ritual, hunting and fishing grounds, new words and notions, all foreign to traditional understandings.

Meanwhile the settlers used the wealth from the land to create institutions to sustain their health.  They paid medical practitioners from Home and elsewhere for diagnoses, advice, relief and treatments.

The new Australians, once Imperial Transportation funds dried up, and bereft of a Poor Law taxation system or long-established charitable endowments, turned to colonial general taxation and local fund-raising and relatively quickly built general hospitals, insane asylums and benevolent homes, provided for professional nurses and training and started medical schools.  Many of these institutions were ready and rough, but they appealed to existing expectations.  The Friendly Society system, adapted from Home, encouraged employed members to join locally governed accident, sickness and maternity schemes.  Casual labouring people, the maimed, the mad, the drunken, the aged and the blind faired poorly.

The author of this book traces these extraordinary developments with empathy, careful detail and wry wit.

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