‘A History of Medicine in Gippsland’
Dr Ann Dettrick, author of A History of Medicine in Gippsland
While driving back and forth across Gippsland for the past year or so, Dr Ann Dettrick has found inspiration time and again in the stories of hospitals and of the doctors and nurses who treated the sick in often very difficult conditions.
That inspiration has been given solid form in the publication A History of Medicine in Gippsland. The large and handsome volume is the result not only of the passion of Dr Dettrick, senior research fellow at Gippsland Medical School, but of the assistance of so many former and present doctors and nurses across the region.
From Wonthaggi in Gippsland’s west to Gelantipy in the east they have responded to the call to re-tell their experiences, and the historical societies in 16 towns have played their part in finding a wealth of stories as well as a wonderful fund of photographs.
There are magical stories from the distant and recent past, ranging from 1839 to the modern day.
For example, there is the anaesthetist who remembered Foster’s Dr Fleming continuing to operate on a patient through his own heart attack.
In Buchan in East Gippsland there was a psychiatric case involving guns, with the police who answered the distress call asking the doctor to go in first to sedate the patient. Fortunately for all concerned, nobody was hurt apart from the psyche of the doctor.
Forming a cohesive narrative from an array of historic records, anecdotes and archives and the collective memories of so many doctors and nurses has been the aim of the book.
An attempt has been made to record the mythological elements of the past; doctors and nurses practising alone who became legends in distant geographies, travelling long distances along bush tracks to reach the sick and injured.
Legendary feats were not only to be found in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2007 the bushfires that surrounded Ensay created conditions that also required special feats of courage and trust of legendary proportions. These collective experiences from every corner of Gippsland will live on in these pages.
The publication preserves the past and brings to life the many people who have served the rural and regional communities of Gippsland with such dedication and skill.
If anyone wishes to purchase this book it is available on line.