Brisbane Diseased: Contagions, Cures and Controversy

This volume of fourteen papers explores the fascinating history of disease in Brisbane and its surrounds. A number of the papers were presented in July 2015 at a Brisbane History Group seminar, also entitled ‘Brisbane Diseased’, that was held at the Marks-Hirschfeld Museum of Medical Hi story. Written by doctors, academics and others with special expertise in medical history, the chapters look at the controversies arising out of urban contagions and the attempts to cure them. Topics include: * medical conditions suffered by convicts at the Moreton Bay penal settlement * quarantining of early immigrants * nineteenth-century efforts to combat sexually transmitted infections by policing prostitution * the slow acceptance of the medical discovery that many Queensland children were suffering from lead poisoning * Brisbane’s experiences of the bubonic plague * a government cover-up involving the controversial inventor of papaw ointment, Dr Thomas Pennington Lucas * turn-of-the-century attempts to have alcoholism recognised as a disease * the arrival of ‘Spanish flu’ at the end of World War One * the eradication of polio, the last great childhood plague * healing practices and medicinal plants of the Quandamooka of Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) * medical quackery and phony cancer cures * Brisbane’s successful industry in surgical corsets * the career of nurse Sister Elizabeth Kenny and her unorthodox treatment of infantile paralysis * the battle to improve hygienic conditions at the Brisbane city morgue