In the comfort
of our ‘first world’ lives we still battle terrible health scourges: cancer,
diabetes, heart disease, or miner’s black lung for which we desperately try to
find cures. While we no longer live in fear of epidemics of diphtheria, measles,
whooping cough or polio because these have largely been eradicated where inoculation
programmes have been successfully implemented, it also makes us complacent,
because we have no scarring memory of mothers in out back mining Queensland
towns like Ravenswood, burying child after child, within days, when diphtheria swept
through the town. If we happen to visit the desolate, dilapidated graveyards of
yesteryear and stand at the foot of such graves the misery and tragedy is
tangible. Walk around the old Ingham Cemetery or the Victoria Estate Cemetery
or any older cemetery and you can’t but be struck by the youth of the deceased
and the appreciation that they died from things which today are largely
preventable because of availability of medicines, access to health services, inoculation
and attention to safe working practice.
Dan Sheahan, our
own bard, as always, has the words to describe what it was like in the not so
long ago days of early Ingham when:
“No
medical aid when Doctor was wanted –
The
Priest and the Parson were far, far away –
Their
women beside them they plowed and planted…
When
hot fever came, unaided they’d linger –
No
ambulance raced “at the double” for them –“
If
we look at the first years of European settlement in the Valley we see that
that death visited the small community with heartbreaking frequency. Infant and child mortality rate was
very high and death did not discriminate by nationality or status. The
Aboriginal population was decimated by European diseases and the death rate
amongst the Melanesian indentured labourers was staggering. Medical care was
very much reliant on home remedies, castor oil being a common cure all, and the
generous and capable women who acted as midwives to neighbouring women. Much of what faced them was beyond their
knowledge and abilities: breech births, bullet wounds, severed limbs, strange
fevers, snake bite, impacted wisdom teeth, dysentery, measles, typhoid, diphtheria,
meningitis, respiratory illnesses, convulsions, and the plethora of childhood
illnesses that were potentially fatal in those days, all confounded them. Sadly
neglect and earth-eating, because of poor diet, were also causes of death in
children. Robert Shepherd commented that “there were few settlers and their
wives who were able to rear all their children … with some families suffering
blow after blow.”
The first so called doctors who found their way to the Valley
were often inept, as much victims of the harsh conditions they found themselves
in and of the drunkenness succumbed to by the young men they came to tend. In fact it was observed that “the easiest way
to find the town doctor was to look in the gutters in front of the hotels”. Arthur Neame records in his diary that a doctor who had came to the Valley lived in
a shanty on the river bank was “not good, he was often drunk and used to draw
drugs from our store containing opium to mix as medicine for his patients, and
take them himself.” Neame ended up studying a book a doctor had given him and
did all the doctoring on his plantation himself. The first competent, permanent
doctor came to Ingham in 1883. His name was Dr. W.C. Macdonald. He was fired by
a determination to do something about the health problems rife in the Valley.
Apparently he “persuaded, threatened and blustered for a more realistic
approach to environmental problems along with rigorous treatment.”
Sources:
Sheahan,
D. “Back to Ingham.” Songs from the
Canefields. Josephine R. Sheahan, Ingham, 1972.
Shepherd,
Robert. “The Herbert River Story: The Health Menace.” Herbert River Express, January 14, 1992; and "The Herbert River Story: The Black Years Pass." Herbert River Express, January 28, 1992.
Moore, Clive. “Whips and Rum Swizzles.” Lectures on North Queensland History. Townsville: History Department, James Cook University of North Queensland, 1975.
Neame, Arthur. The Diary of Arthur Neame 1870-1897.
Vidonja Balanzategui, Bianka. The Herbert River Story. Ingham: Hinchinbrook Shire Council, 2011.
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Ingham Hospital Board members, 1909
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People pictured: (back row
L-R): R.S. Alston, B. Lynn, Dr. W.C. MacDonald, Hon. A.S. Cowley, J. Menzies,
A. Friend. (sitting): Nurse Probationer L. Bonning, Sam Allen, A.J. Cobroft,
Jim Ryan, J.J. Cockburn, Matron Macartney.
Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Library
Collection
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Womens ward of the
Ingham Hospital Queensland 1916
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Source: State
Library of Queensland: View this image at the State Library of Queensland: hdl.handle.net/10462/deriv/97694
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Ingham
Ambulance vehicle 1925
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An ambulance vehicle used in Ingham,
pictured with First Superintendent Mr Edgar Von Alpen.
Source: Hinchinbrook Shire
Library Collection |
