School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemDoctoring old age: a social history of geriatric medicine in Victoria.( 2003-02)The pattern of medical practice that emerged in Victoria, following the introduction of a national system of publicly subsidised voluntary hospital and medical insurance by the Liberal-Country Party Coalition government in the early 1950s, was dominated by the provision of individualised, curative medical services based upon a reductionist model of disease. Older adults, classified officially as aged according to age of eligibility for the Age Pension introduced in 1909 by the Commonwealth government, were prominent in this pattern of practice. The number of adults over the age of sixty-five increased over the early decades of the twentieth century, and the technical advances made in postwar medicine led to a growing clinical engagement with the degenerative diseases associated with old age. The growing medical involvement with old age , the basis of the specialist fields of medical practice that proliferated throughout the 1960s, was recognised as such only in relation to the work of general practitioners. Specialist practitioners defined their clinical engagement with old age in terms of pathologies of bodily organs or systems. In contrast, the special role of the GP in relation to elderly patients was defined in terms of that practitioners personal knowledge of patients as individuals. Formal designation of the general practitioner as specialist in caring for the sick aged was confined to the Pensioner Medical Service, a component of the national system of remuneration for medical services. Within this pattern of medical practice infirm old people, whose afflictions could not be readily resolved by curative medical services, occupied a residual category outside the field of active medical practice. When poverty compounded the difficulties experienced by these infirm old people they were categorised as a social problem to which the appropriate response was the provision of adequate infirmary beds through the charitable efforts of local communities. (For complete abstract open document)
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ItemCareers in captivity: Australian prisoner-of-war medical officers in Japanese captivity during World War II( 2003-12)During World War II, 106 Australian medical officers were taken prisoner of war by the Japanese, along with 22,000 Australian troops and many thousands more British and Dutch. Over three and a half years, they accompanied work parties of Allied prisoners sent to camps all over southeast Asia and Japan, living in a variety of harsh and dangerous conditions. Despite the doctors’ efforts, one in three Australian POWs died in captivity. Of those who survived, most attributed this not to inner strength or to luck, but to the care of their medical personnel. Yet apart from the attention recently accorded to Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop, who was only one of these doctors, the experiences and work of all Australian POW medical officers in World War II has been largely overlooked. Medical officers were crucial for the survival of Australian prisoners, both physically and psychologically. Doctors attempted to keep men of all nationalities alive with little medication, tools or diagnostic equipment, and battled a variety or medical conditions, starvation and systematic physical brutality from their captors. As survival became more difficult, the increased status and responsibilities of the doctors had significant ramifications for the military chain of command and for the burdens on the doctors themselves. This thesis explores many aspects of Australian POW doctors’ experience of captivity: the complexities of practising modern medicine without any of its tools; the development of unique strategies to combat a wide variety of environmental limitations and life-threatening medical conditions; the unique relationship between medical personnel and their captors; the relationships between Australian POW medical officers and combatant officers and a comparison with relationships in the British military in captivity; the daily dilemmas faced by doctors trying to reconcile their professional ethics with their military obligations, and how they coped with these responsibilities. Doctors’ continuing roles in the postwar lives of ex-POWs, and the influence captivity had on their own lives and careers after the war are also analysed. While examination of the influence of medical officers on other prisoners’ lives is important, studying their experience as a group in their own right is equally valuable. In this thesis, both these areas are investigated to bring a variety of perspectives to understanding the complexity and importance of Australian POW doctors’ captivity experience.