School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemCommunicable Knowledge: Medical Communication, Professionalisation, and Medical Reform in Colonial Victoria, 1855-66( 2020)This thesis examines the process of medical professionalisation in colonial Victoria from 1855-66. During this eleven-year period the medical profession of colonial Victoria were able to create Australia’s first long lasting medical societies and medical journal, found the first medical school, and receive legislative support of their claims to exclusive knowledge of medicine. The next time an Australian colony would have these institutions created would not be for another 20 years. This thesis examines these developments through a framework of communication, primarily from the medical community itself. Communication was central to the process that resulted in the creation of the above listed institutions. Here communication is examined as the driving force behind the two processes of professionalisation: the internal, community creating and boundary forming aspect; and the external process through which the community gains external recognition of their claims. For Victorian practitioners during the period of this study the internal process drives the creation of the societies, the journal, and the medical school, whereas the external process is typified by the campaign for ‘Medical Reform’ that sees the community engage in agitation for legislative backing of their conception of medicine as science over other alternate medicines. Communication was not isolated within the colony. As such the place of the Victorian medical community as a node within transnational networks of knowledge exchange is examined. As Victoria was better integrated into these networks than its colonial neighbours, an examination of the involvement of said flow of information in the creation of professional communities is considered an important part of this analysis. Behind these processes of community creation, I trace a thread of disunity sparked by professional differences. Highly publicised arguments over differences in medical opinion play out in the colonial press. This comes to a head at the end of the period of study. Despite their focus on communication the medical community ignores the role their public conduct plays in this process. The end result is that, while they were able to create these lasting institutions, their public conduct saw the public’s opinion of them stay low through to the end of the century.
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ItemThe voice of Methodism: temperance policy in Victoria, Australia 1902-1977( 2018)This thesis seeks to examine the influence of the Methodist Church in Victoria, Australia, on public policy in the twentieth century using the issue of Temperance as a case study. Methodists had a tradition of social activism dating back to their eighteenth-century founder John Wesley. While the Church took up many causes, Temperance had become its signature concern. The secular Temperance movement in Victoria, Australia was unable to bring about significant reform so Methodist activists became the prime instigators of change and secured changes to licensing in 1906. Methodists adopted a policy of ‘unswerving hostility’ to alcohol but, unable to adapt to social change in the following years, their influence slowly diminished. It was finally eclipsed in 1965 following a Royal Commission on Hotel Trading Hours. The Church, split between those clinging to traditional values and those seeking a better way to engage the community to their point of view, lost its reforming voice.
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ItemDemocracy at work in a gambling state? : a testing case for Habermas's proceduralism( 2001)Jurgen Habermas's proceduralism is represented as a dynamic discursive model appropriate for normative analysis of complex modern constitutional democracies.^1 This discourse theoretical approach to the relationship between law and democracy focuses on the interplay between informal public sphere activity, and the formal deliberative processes, and legislative output. William Rehg has noted that the argument is "pitched at a very abstract level",^2 but has also referred to the fact that in Between Facts and Norms Habermas also "descends to the level of the real democratic procedure. ... "3 The, less formal level of Habermas's proceduralism has been further articulated in discussions and articles. The concern of this thesis has been to test this less formal level of Habermas's procedural model, and to reach some conclusion regarding the capacity for this theory to provide explanatory and/or critical insights into the social practices of a modern constitutional democracy. The less formal level of Habermas's procedural model has been tested against the background of gambling public sphere activity and gambling related legislative processes in the State of Victoria in different time periods. The conclusion has been reached that, while this test has revealed some problems for empirical analysis, and some limitations regarding the analysis of modern capitalist societies, the investigation undertaken here does, nevertheless, provide critical and explanatory insights into the way democracy works in a specific historical context. This is to certify that - (i) the thesis comprises only my original work except where indicated in the preface, (ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, (iii) the thesis is 30,000 words in length, exclusive of endnotes, appendices and bibliography.
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ItemDamaged goods : hepatitis C and the politics of the Victorian Blood exchange( 2000)In February 1990, the Victorian Blood Transfusion Service (VIC BTS) became one of the first transfusion services in the world, to implement testing for the newly isolated hepatitis C virus. In this thesis, I trace the development of hepatitis C policy by the Victorian Transfusion Service. Policy development was complicated by the known indeterminacy of some hepatitis C test results, as well as the Service's desire to avoid a further AIDS-like crisis. In particular, the Service had to decide how to minimise the risk of hepatitis C infection to recipients, and what to do with the donors and recipients infected with the hepatitis C virus. In making these decisions, the VIC BTS was reshaping its relationship with donors and recipients, and this re-configuring of the relationships of Victorian blood exchange through the development of hepatitis C policy, is an underlying theme of this thesis. From its inception in 1929, the Victorian Service maintained a donor-oriented culture in which the health of donors and recipients was always a key priority. For Service staff, the voluntary gifts of donors made blood-banking a special enterprise, informing a 'moral economy' whereby the Service felt obligated to meet the needs of both donors and recipients. However, with the advent of the AIDS crisis in 1980s, the confidence of donors (and the public) in the safety of the Victorian blood supply fell, and some recipients, allegedly infected with HIV, initiated litigation against the Service's parent body, the Australian Red Cross Society. In response, the Victorian Service came to distrust the gift of blood, controlling and managing its risks by way of practices designed to assess other ordinary commodities. Blood came to be treated by the Service, and the Federal Government, not so much as a gift, but as an ambiguous commodity. The development of hepatitis C policy produced a growing tension between the Transfusion Service's longstanding 'moral economy', and its new, pharmaceutically informed, risk-assessment practices. On the one hand, the Service was very risk-averse in its policy development, implementing testing with great swiftness, and deferring all donors with indeterminate test results. Even when the Service later became aware that some of these donors had probably never been infected with hepatitis C, its desire to maintain as safe a blood supply as possible, necessitated the continuing deferral of all donors with indeterminate results. On the other hand, the Service felt obligated to provide the best care and treatment feasible for potentially infected donors. With few government resources available for the management of hepatitis C, the Victorian Service devoted great time and energy to ensure deferred donors could be confident in the interpretation of their test results, and would receive expert care and treatment if necessary. The tension between the special ethical nature of Victorian blood exchange, and the management of blood as a dubious commodity, came to a head in the development of lookback policy. The Victorian Service felt a clinically-informed, 'moral obligation' to 'look back' and locate individual recipients who may have been infected by blood transfusions contaminated with hepatitis C. However, others viewed hepatitis C lookback from a more distanced, population perspective, arguing that it was a technical issue to be resolved through a cost-assessment analysis. Such an analysis showed hepatitis C lookback would be inefficient and expensive as a public health intervention. Although major hepatitis C lookback programs were eventually supported at a national level, the `correct' way of developing Victorian transfusion policy remains open to debate. What is clear, however, is that future policy development by the Victorian Service will continue to reflect, and to reshape, its relationships with donors and recipients.
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ItemA history of occupational health in Victoria until 1980( 1998)A History of Occupational Health in Victoria until 1980 In the flurry of activity in occupational health which began in the late 1970s, the impression was often given that nothing had been done before. In fact the State Governments made a considerable contribution to occupational health prior to this time, a contribution that has not previously been documented. The main theme of the thesis is the role of science in the prevention of occupational disease, with emphasis on the scientific work of the State Occupational Health Divisions, particularly in Victoria. Subsidiary themes concern the public administration of occupational health; the history of union involvement in occupational health; and the effect on occupational health of the changing political climate in the 1970s. The history of occupational health in Victoria began around 1900 with concern about the health of miners. In the beginning most of the work - including the chemical analysis of industrial pollutants - was done by physicians rather than scientists. In 1937 the Industrial Hygiene Division was set up in the Department of Health under the direction of,-- Dr D.O. Shiels. Eventually specialist inspectors and scientists, later known as Industrial Hygienists, were employed in the Division, an arrangement that continued until 1982. In that year the election of a Labor government in Victoria marked the start of a new attitude to occupational health, which placed less emphasis on a scientific approach to_ the assessment of occupational health hazards and more on the use of industrial relations as a means of protecting workers health. The history until the 1980's divides into three eras: prior to 1937; from 1937 - 1956 when Dr D.O. Shiels was appointed Industrial Hygiene Medical Officer in the Department of Health and established the Industrial Hygiene Division; and from 1956 - 1980 when the Division was under the control of Dr A.J. Christophers. Within this chronological framework, the thesis illustrates the effect on occupational health of various labour, industrial and governmental activities by means of a series of small case studies. These are: (i) the anthrax deaths in the 1950s which illustrate the IHD's scientific approach to problem-solving; (ii) the phosphine inquests which illustrate some of the attitudes of unions, employers and expert witnesses; (iii) a case of arsenic poisoning, claimed to be due to eating contaminated mussels and said to be a government cover-up; iv) the involvement of the IHD in other environmental health issues; (v) the 1951 Benzene Regulations which resulted in the cessation of the use of benzene as a solvent, despite the initial reaction from industry that no substitute was available; (vi) the wharf on-call service and the attitude of the waterside workers; (vii) the cases of methyl chloride poisoning that resulted in the promulgation of the Methyl Chloride Regulations banning the use of methyl chloride as a refrigerant; (viii) the story of asbestos in the blue Harris trains, which illustrates the differing attitudes of scientists and workers to the question of risk assessment, standard-setting and the acceptability of occupational risk; (ix) the activities of the IHD in monitoring exposures to asbestos and silica, illustrating some of the constraints under which the Division worked. (x) the response of the IHD to radiation hazards, which illustrates the effect of current social concerns on the direction of public policy. Written by Janet Sowden April 1998
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ItemThe mining collection of the National Museum of Victoria 1856-1871( 1990)The Museum of Victoria holds one of the world's great nineteenth century mining collections. This is due to the foresight and energy of Frederick McCoy (1817-1899), director of the National Museum of Victoria from 1857 until his death in 1899. He collected for the museum in many fields, but it was his role as Chairman of the Mining Commission of Victoria during 1856-58 that provided the impetus and funding to commence a mining collection. Models were commissioned, mining tools and implements were collected and a large body of documentary material was assembled by McCoy to support the collection. Particular strengths were models and tools from Victoria, Saxony, the Harz Mountains, the Ural region of Russia, and the United Kingdom. In 1871 the mining collection (along with the agricultural collection) was separated from the natural history specimens at the National Museum and transferred to the newly constituted Industrial and Technological Museum, precursor to the Museum of Victoria, Division of Science and Technology. This break with McCoy's control over the mining collection has provided an appropriate point of termination for this present work although sufficient evidence is included to show that the collection reached its zenith in its earliest years and then declined. The catastrophic disposal of part of the collection following the Second World War is also documented. The collection comprised approximately. 300 items at its greatest extent although I have only been able to locate about one third of these items. All models acquired prior to 1871 are included in the catalogue which comprises Appendix One of this study. This study explores the notion that such a collection, extraordinary for a colonial institution, was assembled by McCoy for the purpose of technical education for miners. In this, McCoy was following the 'metropolitan' model of the Museum of Practical Geology in London and influential mining academies in Freiberg, Clausthal and Paris. That he succeeded in assembling a world class model collection is proved beyond doubt and this study examines changing views about the relevance of such a collection for local conditions. A shift in McCoy's thinking about technical education for miners is highlighted against the background of his unsuccessful quest to establish a school of mines at the University of Melbourne in conjunction with the mining collection under his control at the National Museum of Victoria. Contemporary opinion is also marshalled in an attempt to judge the success of McCoy's aspirations. Such opinion is interspersed in the chronological narrative of the first six chapters, while the final chapter summarises this evidence and presents some general conclusions. The central theme of technical education for miners is also examined in light of subsidiary themes such as the debate over the most appropriate location of the museum. and its implications for the users of the museum; the changing nature of Victoria's mining industry during the two decades 1851-71 and how this affected the collection; the nature of colonial patent legislation and its relationship with the mining collection; the impact of intercolonial and international exhibitions on the museum; and the role of the museum in nineteenth century culture and in particular the role of the National Museum in the culture of colonial Victoria. This study also draws upon and makes accessible for future researchers an important and almost totally neglected source of information about nineteenth century mining technology in both the colonial and international context.
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ItemSome foundations of science in Victoria in the decade after separation( 1990)The decade following separation from New South Wales must surely be considered one of the most dramatic in Victoria's history. In that short space of time Victoria was transformed from a small dependent colony into a bustling cosmopolitan self-governing community of enormous wealth, completely outstripping its neighbours in the process. There had been an influx of migrants of such magnitude that the civil authorities found it very difficult to keep up with the population explosion. It must at times have seemed to them to be an impossible task to provide food, housing, water, power, roads and transport, sewerage and other amenities adequate to cope with the increasing number of people pouring into the colony. Added to this were problems of civil insurrection, severe economic depression, major constitutional reforms, and great political instability. During this period, despite all the trials and difficulties they had to face, Victorians developed a real sense that they were the premier colony, that they could achieve. whatever they set out to accomplish. There was a great feeling of optimism and self-confidence.
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ItemSocial and scientific factors in the development of Melbourne's early water supply( 1981)The research towards this thesis commenced in 1978 during a period of sabbatical leave from Melbourne State College. I would like to thank the College Council for the opportunity to consult material at the British Library and the Wellcome Institute, London. In my often fruitless searches for material I have been grateful for the knowledge and goodwill of many librarians and archivists. I would like to particularly acknowledge the assistance of Mr. R. Price, Wellcome Institute, London; Miss A. Tovell, Australian Medical Association library, Melbourne; Miss W. Johns, Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works Library; and the reference staff of the La Tribe Library and the Victorian Public Records Office. My supervisor Miss D. Dyason introduced me to the history of public health. Her expertise and wide knowledge were utilised extensively throughout this project. I will always be grateful to Ingrid Barker for her ability to translate my endless rough drafts and marginal notes into a typed manuscript. Finally, I wish to dedicate this thesis to my wife, Dawn, who more than anyone else encouraged me to continue my part-time studies and finally complete this research.