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

283
appointment ; that he should have felt compelled to write such a pleading
letter to the Executive was a revealing reflection on the judgment and
partisanship of that body; that he was overlooked on August 3 in favour
of Benson, formerly Medical Superintendent of the Orphan Asylum, who had
little interest in or knowledge of Pub lic Health, was even more so.
Actually , Hal l was not the only one to recognize the need for
quick , purposeful action. As nothing had been done officially by the
Hobart Hospital Board, the House Surgeon , or other Honorary Medical Officers ,
Crowther, 'very· praiseworthily 1 6 in the Mercury' s opinion , directed two of
his medical students, E.L. Crowther and G. Stokell, to attend the hospital
daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to vaccinate all and sundry. Vaccinations
began on July 15 with lymph supplied from a private patient; on the same
day, the Hospital Board authorized Turnley, the Resident Medical Officer ,
to advertise that vaccinations would be performed daily at the hospital,
although , oddly enough, no special provisions were made by him to carry them
out. For the first two weeks the demand for vaccination by the students
\vas not great , but after the Gazette announcement , it became enormous ;
hmtlever, they contrived to keep a register, referring all doubtful cases
to the House Surgeon for consideration.
Meanwhile, on August 5 the Vaccination Bill was read in
Parliament for the second time. As house to house visitation did,
indeed, prove unpopular, the matter was referred to a Select Committee
composed of Officer, Knight, Sharland, M. Miller and the Colonial Treasurer ;
Doctors Smart , Crowther, Turnley, Agnew , Carns , Doughty and Hall gave
evidence . On September 3 Miller brought up the Committee's report which
concluded that the present law was altogether unsatisfactory, useless and
inoperative; that a large and most dangerous proportion of the chi ldren
in the colony was unprotected, and that no measure short of houṡe to
house visitation could effectually secure the community from smallpox.
In fact, the Committee of Enquiry, basing its report solely on the evidence
of medical men, entirely agreed with Hall, whose own evidence was , by far,
the longest and most detailed, and constituted a concise survey of
vaccination in Britain, in Europe and in Tasmania.
However, Hall's task to ensure the proper vaccination of all
persons in the colony was not an easy one: in the community, even amongst
the medical fraternity itself, there was , naturally enough , a lack of
knmvledge and misunderstanding . Hall, therefore , was obliged continuously
6
Mercury, Sept. 18 & Oct. 19, 1863 .