'A History of Medicine in Gippsland'

Driving back and forth across Gippsland for the past year or so, Dr. Ann Dettrick found inspiration time and again in the stories she heard of the hospitals and of the doctors and nurses who treated the sick in often difficult conditions.  Now that inspiration has been given solid form in the publication A History of Medicine in Gippsland.  This large and handsome volume is the result, not only of the passion of Dr. Dettrick, senior research fellow at Gippsland Medical School, Monash University, Gippsland Campus, but of the assistance of so many former and present doctors and nurses across the region.

From Wonthaggi to Gelantipy they have responded to this call to re-tell their experiences, and the historical societies in 16 towns have played their part in finding a wealth of stories as well as a wonderful fund of photographs to support them.  These are magical stories from the past and recent past, from 1839 up until today.  There is the anaesthetist who remembered Foster’s Dr. Fleming continuing to operate on a patient through his own heart attack.  In Buchan there was a psychiatric case involving guns, the police who answered the distress call asking the doctor to go in first to sedate the patient.  Fortunately for all concerned, nobody was hurt apart from the psyche of the doctor.

Forming a cohesive narrative from an array of historic records, anecdotes and archives and the collective memories of so many doctors and nurses has been the aim of this book.  An attempt has been made to record the mythological elements of the past; doctors and nurses practising alone who became legends in distant geographies, travelling long distances along bush tracks to reach the sick and injured.  Legendary feats are not only to be found in the 19th and 20th centuries.  In 2007 the bushfires that surrounded Ensay created conditions that also required special feats of courage and trust of legendary proportions.  These collective experiences from every corner of Gippsland will live on in these pages.

This is a publication that not only preserves the past but brings to life the many people who have served the rural and regional communities of Gippsland with such dedication and skill.