PDF (Whole thesis) - UTas ePrints - University of Tasmania

190
task of caring for the sick at Impression BayJ and for the miserable
advantage they had taken of Eckford 's poor financial position .
We are indeed at the Antipodes . Young lawyers grabbing
their thousands for 'liability to loss of office ' and
then becoming Premiers - lawyers who have comparatively
early in life retired from their offices with independent
fortunes , and then, enjoying the s\oeets of office to the
tune of twelye hundred per annum, coolly valuing the
arduous and dangerous avocations of gentlemen at least
their equals at the sum of one pound per day and a
government ration . . ... That the Executive Council should
deliberately have valued a medical man's services , in
such a duty, is an indelible disgrace to them, and an
unpardonab le insult to us .
Likewise, he attacked members of his on profession who, though worldly
successful themselves , had declined the service on any terms , and yet
had the effrontery to condemn the condition of the offer of a poor man
like himself.
While medical men continue backbiting , undermining and
unders elling one another instead of comb ining for mutual
protection, so long will mean lawyers and other purse-proud
manunon worshippers hold us cheap, and thi.nk we make
'comfortab le provision' for our families, by sacrificing
our 1i ves in the cause of humanity in the hope of procuring
them £200 a year for a brif period with the brilliant
prospect, if we perish or not, of earning one pound per day
and a government ration. If the profession, as one body,
do not resent this outrage, they deserve one and all the
contemptuous estimate that has been made of them. l O
The Persian Affair, however, was not over .
Following
Eckford 's report on November 16 that the crew were all healthy, the ship
was permitted to return to the Quarantine ground at Hobarton where it
was visited by Benson on Novemb er 20 .
As no sickness had occurred for
fourteen days ,' the Governor-in-Council released the ship from quarantine
to enable it to discharge cargo and communicate with the city .
However)
between Novemb er 23 and Novemb er 25, ight members of the crew were taken
to the General Hospital ill. Once again panic hit the city . Medical
men differed as to the cause of their sickness .
Requested by members
of Parliament and some citizens to establish the identity of the disease)
Hall visited the patients) two of whom he was sure were suffering from
typhus fever , the rest showed milder symptoms .
Fortunately, the disease
did not spread to the citizens at large, but was confined to two or three
10
Courier, November 6, 1857 &
Daily News , November 9, 1857 .