Illness in 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 for 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 htese 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 mained, the mad, the drunken, the aged, aned the blind faired poorly.
The author of this book traces these extraordinary developments with empathy, careful detail and dry wit.
Contents:
Acknowledgements
1. Isolation
2. Appropriation
3. Infants
4. Mothers
5. Crowd Diseases
6. Children
7. Tuberculosis, Cancer and the Health Transition
8. Irregular Practices
9. Accidents
10. Hygiene
11. Doctors
12. Hospitals
Notes
Bibliography
Index
