Leprosy in Australia

Western Australia has had 20 new cases of leprosy in the past five years. The disease disproportionately affects Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
 
So what is leprosy? And why isn’t it a thing of the past?
 

General Practice Past: Dr. Leslie MacDonald Outridge

Many doctors chose to leave their practice during WWII and sign up for the Australian Army medical corps. Our subject today was one such doctor.

Dr. Leslie MacDonald Outridge was born in Brisbane on the 1st November 1900.  He was a graduate of the University of  Sydney in 1924, and then returned to practice in various locations around Queensland before settling on Gympie to set up his own practice.

General Practice Past: Dr Ettie Lyons

If any of you follow my Facebook or twitter feeds you will know me to be a proud (and recently vocal) General Practitioner.  You will also know that in the last little while my specialty has taken a political beating and I am not the only GP feeling more than a little devalued and questioning my choice of career.

I had been planning and researching this particular series for a while - delayed as always due to a busy life.  I'm bringing it forward for my own purpose - to find inspiration in the amazing doctors who went before me in this remarkable specialty of mine. 

We will start with Dr. Ettie Lyons.

Asthma cigarettes

Some of you may have seen this particular image doing the rounds a while back.  I'm guilty of posting it myself without comment to my facebook page because, you know, smoking and asthma!  Funny!

As with every meme that does the rounds on facebook, however, the wider historical context of this one probably got a little bit missed in the details. 

So let's have a little bit of a chat about 'Asthma cigarettes'. 

Outbreak

It's all over the news.  And it's scary.  The virus without a cure that makes you literally bleed to death.  With a 90% mortality rate.  That's raging out of control in Africa.

Ebola.

But what is it, exactly?  And where did it come from?

An Eye for War.

This wasn't the post I was planning to write, I had one planned about leprosy, - but I can never resist a story about a good Australian doctor, so hopefully you can all wait a little longer for that tale.

Today we are going to talk about the wonderfully named Sir Charles Snodgrass Ryan who was born on Killeen Station in Victoria on the 20th September 1853.  He studied at the University of Melbourne and then completed his study at the University of Edinburgh (Australian medical degrees were not wholly awarded in Australia until well into the 20th century - in fact up until very recently, most Australian doctors would complete at least some of their training in the United Kingdom).  He then undertook further postgraduate training as a surgeon in Italy and Austria. 

Sir Ryan at the time of his enlistment (public domain image sourced from the Australian War Memorial Collection)

To the heart of things

Over the last few weeks I have been forced to watch a lot of soccer.

This is a problem because I don't like soccer.  I suspect I am not the only person currently suffering in this manner.  Fortunately it is now all over for another four years and from what I can understand, it's all about Germany.

Hopefully my saying that hasn't spoiled someone's day.

Anyway in honor of their win I thought today I would talk about a German surgeon who did some (mostly) pretty cool things - which, to me, is generally more interesting than kicking a ball around a field and faking serious injury.

Werner Forssman (public domain image sourced from Wikipedia)