Peter Hobbins

Outside the institute there is a desert: the tenuous trajectories of medical research in interwar Australia.

Throughout the fin de siecle, medical research institutes increasingly hallmarked “modernity” across industrialized nations and their colonies.1 While the reification of these “veritable laboratory Xanadus” as insular centres for pure science has recently been questioned,2 the absence of such facilities in Australia prior to the First World War had enduring ramifications for public, political and professional perceptions of scientific medicine. Indeed, the handful of establishments that arose between 1910 and 1939 merit attention precisely because they so patently embodied local projections of “medical research”. Underpinned by a pragmatic progressivism, yet constrained by fealty to empire, the enterprises emerging during this period were predominantly British in flavour and modern in their ideals. In both form and function, however, the early Australian research institutes were never simple facsimiles of international models. Instead, each was shaped by local accommodations in defining its mission and value within a culture often indifferent—and not infrequently hostile—to basic research. Indeed, each of these ventures constituted an experiment, or rather a contingent series of experiments, to triangulate itself within a favourable medical, social and political space. Yet the development of the early Antipodean research institutes resists a teleological reading. Most subsisted with fewer than ten to fifteen staff, and many stagnated or failed outright. In the absence of a stable funding base or a groundswell of investigators determined to make a career of research, these enterprises could have reverted to the status of little more than diagnostic laboratories. In responding to the challenge laid down by Steve Sturdy and Roger Cooter a decade ago,3 this article explicates the circumstances and strategies by which laboratory-based science negotiated a place in Australian medicine. My focus lies primarily with the most successful establishment, Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Research in Pathology and Medicine, directed between 1923 and 1944 by Charles Kellaway (1889–1952). I argue that Kellaway’s willingness to experiment with the form, function and funding of the Hall Institute not only ensured its own survival, but created exemplars and infrastructure that fostered medical research as a locally viable career.

Rewriting Quarantine: Pacific History at Australia’s Edge

There is no doubt that the historical geographies of quarantine and racial nationalism overlapped at Sydneys North Head Quarantine Station. To conflate these practices into a single narrative of immigration restriction, however, obscures other stories and agendas. Drawing upon inscriptions left in the Sydney sandstone by those detained at North Head, we argue that for many Pacific voyagers, quarantine was merely a temporary interruption rather than an exclusionary endpoint or affront. Citing the shuttling trade of ships and crews from New Zealand, Japan and China, this article re-locates North Head from a continental gateway to a Pacific outpost.

Serpentine Science: Charles Kellaway and the Fluctuating Fortunes of Venom Research in Interwar Australia

Australian medical research before the Second World War is predominantly viewed as an anodyne precursor to its conspicuous postwar successes. However, the expanding intellectual appeal and state support for local research after 1945 built upon scientific practices, networks, facilities and finances established between 1919 and 1939. Arguably the most prominent medical scientist working in Australia during this period was Charles Kellaway (1889–1952), director of Melbournes Walter and Eliza Hall Institute from 1923 until 1944. Facing both financial challenges and a profoundly unsupportive intellectual climate, Kellaway instigated a major research programme into Australian snake venoms. These investigations garnered local and international acclaim, allowing Kellaway to speak as a significant scientific actor while fostering productive laboratory collaborations. The venom work spurred basic research in tissue injury, anaphylaxis and leukotriene pharmacology, yet delivered pragmatic clinical outcomes, particularly an effective antivenene. By selecting a problem of continuing public interest, Kellaway also stimulated wider engagement with science and initiated a pioneering ad hoc Commonwealth grant for medical research. In tracing his training, mentors and practices within the interwar milieu, this article argues that Kellaways venom studies contributed materially to global biomedical developments and to the broader viability of medical research in Australia.

Compromised ethical principles in randomised clinical trials of distant, intercessory prayer.

The effects of distant, intercessory prayer on health outcomes have been studied in a range of randomised, blinded clinical trials. However, while seeking the evidentiary status accorded this ‘gold standard’ methodology, many prayer studies fall short of the requirements of the World Medical Associations Declaration of Helsinki for the ethical conduct of trials involving human subjects. Within a sample of 15 such studies published in the medical literature, many were found to have ignored or waived key ethical precepts, including adequate standards of care, patient confidentiality and informed consent. Prayer was considered in most studies to pose negligible or no risk to subjects, despite the fact that no clear mechanism of action nor any safety monitoring procedures were described. As a result, many studies did not meet basic ethical standards required of clinical trials of biophysical interventions, making application of their results ethically problematic. If investigators wish their data to adequately inform the use or rejection of intercessory prayer to improve health, these shortcomings should be addressed in future studies.

‘No complaints’: counter-narratives of immigration and detention in graffiti at North Head Immigration Detention Centre, Australia 1973–76

ABSTRACT Immigration has played a particularly significant role in shaping settler-colonial societies, including Australia. Successive governments have taken instrumental roles in constructing narratives of Australia’s immigration history. Contrary to the images we see today – of capsizing boats and desperate people seeking refuge – the picture of post-Second World War immigration was all sunshine and smiles, hope and opportunity. Throughout the post-war decades the vaunted Australian sense of fairness was tested by those who entered the country without valid entry permits, for example stowaways and ship’s deserters or visitors, including students who had overstayed their visas. In this paper, we consider an archaeological assemblage of 327 graffiti made by immigration detainees while they were awaiting deportation from the North Head Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney, New South Wales. These graffiti provide a counter-narrative to the rosy image and official record of late-twentieth-century immigration to Australia.

A Spur to Atavism: Placing Platypus Poison

For over two centuries, the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) has been constructed and categorized in multiple ways. An unprecedented mélange of anatomical features and physiological functions, it long remained a systematic quandary. Nevertheless, since 1797, naturalists and biologists have pursued two recurring obsessions. Investigations into platypus reproduction and lactation have focused attention largely upon females of the species. Despite its apparent admixture of avian, reptilian and mammalian characters, the platypus was soon placed as a rudimentary mammal – primitive, naïve and harmless. This article pursues a different taxonomic trajectory, concentrating on a specifically male anatomical development: the crural spur and venom gland on the hind legs. Once the defining characteristic of both the platypus and echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), by 1830 this sexed spur had been largely dismissed as inactive and irrelevant. For a creature regularly depicted as a biological outlier, the systematic and evolutionary implications of platypus poison have remained largely overlooked. In Australia, however, sporadic cases of ‘spiking’ led to consistent homologies being remarked between the platypus crural system and the venom glands of snakes. As with its reproductive reliance upon eggs, possession of an endogenous poison suggested significant reptilian affinities, yet the platypus has rarely been classed as an advanced reptile. Indeed, ongoing uncertainty regarding the biological purpose of the male’s spur has ostensibly posed a directional puzzle. As with so many of its traits, however, platypus poison has been consistently described as a redundant remnant, rather than an emergent feature indicating evolutionary advance.

Union Jack or Yellow Jack? Smallpox, Sailors, Settlers and Sovereignty

ABSTRACT In 1877 the flagship of the Royal Navy’s Australia Station, HMS Wolverene, was quarantined in Sydney Harbour. It marked a curious moment in which the dreaded disease smallpox arrived in the city aboard three different vessels within the space of a month. With cases appearing among merchant seamen, naval sailors and local residents, this event exposed numerous antinomies in the health governance of New South Wales. If the colony’s legislative authority over the imperial warships tasked with its protection proved uncertain, so did the extent to which civic power could be exerted over the movements, property and bodies of individual citizens. Exploring the conjoint histories of the naval and medical defence of the Australian colonies, this article argues that 1877 saw these tensions playing out on different scales of sovereignty. Marking a critical point before colonial defence and quarantine strategies turned markedly against ‘Asiatics’, this incident encapsulated the uneasy state of colonial self-government amid a technological transformation of the seaways.

Health, Medicine and the Sea: Australian Voyages c.1815–1860

domesticity. In this chapter, Conor’s focus is on print culture, particularly cartoons and middle-brow travel writings. This is followed by a fifth chapter which focuses on interracial sexuality and the impacts of the language used to describe sexual encounters. Conor explores “print’s expressions” while also examining “its countervailing suppressions” (285). Conor’s sixth and final chapter, tellingly titled “Absolute frights”, is devoted to exploring colonial depictions of female Aboriginal Elders. Throughout Skin Deep, Conor engages critically with a commendably wide range of pertinent primary source materials, bringing a similar breadth of relevant secondary sources to bear when framing her analysis and discussion. Her deeply considered and well-informed discourse ought to go a long way towards changing conversations in Australia about Aboriginal women, past and present.

From Camels to Cats: Experimenting with Medicine in the Australian Flying Corps

As a nascent air force, the Australian Flying Corps (AFC) relied largely upon other services for medical evaluation of its personnel. In 1918, however, the AFC experimented with a dedicated medical board to gauge the suitability of recruits and convalescents as aircrew. This article examines the formation of the AFC’s Medical Board, which was paired with another innovation: laboratory research. Conducted by the board’s head, Charles Kellaway, animal studies into anoxaemia were intended to provide a means of determining suitability of aviators for high-altitude flight. In matching data derived from cats with front-line service conditions, Kellaway sought to enshrine a particular type of ‘steady’ man to conquer the novel realm of airspace.