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

317
He then described in detail Baron Liebig of Munich 's newly dis covered
formula for artificially fed infants, the recipe for which was:
15 fluid ounces of skimmed cows ' milk
1 1 ;2 ounces by weight of wheaten flour
22 grains of carbonate of potash
all boiled together as directed.
1 1 I 2 o.unces of malt flour mixed in 3 ounces of water .
Add to the milk mixture when removed from the fire .
Hall's instructions were detailed and precise;
perfectly obvious .
his intentions were
I have prepared this artificial mother 's milk and made
a meal of it. It is both palatable and easily digested. 3
Surely it was the first time anyone had deliberately used the Royal Society
to disseminate new methods in child care to the Public.
On February 25, 1867, six years after the idea was first discussed
by the Mercury, Alderman Cook again suggested the appointment of a Health
Officer, as the City Council was empowered to do under the Act 21 Vic:
No . 15 Sec. 3.
The circumstances which led to his proposal were dramatic
and extraordinary, truly a unique incident in the history of Hobart Town .
On January 19, '1867 , a· healthy nine year old boy named Thomas Bowring was
severely bitten in the underlip by a half-bred spaniel bitch, which, on
that and the previous day, was unusually vicious, quarrelsome, and peculiar
in its actions, biting at stones in the street, eating bits of straw and
frothing at the mouth .
Smart immediately dressed the wound which
progressed favourab ly and healed within ten days .
The dog died the day
after it bit the boy . Bowring 's health continued good until February 15
when he suddenly started up in his sleep, jumped out of bed , and screamed
violently.
On February 17 he was so ill and behaving so wildly and
strangely that Smart , then Hall, and later four other doctors , R.W. Carns ,
H. W. Agnew, R. S. Bright and J . Doughty, were called in. After watching
the child 's strange and terrible sufferings, each doctor diagnosed
"hydrophobia" for which there was no known cure at that time .
same day, the boy calmed and died in his mother 's arms .
Late the
This frightening , horrifying attack of so terrible a disease
was believed to he the ·first case south of the equator and certainly, the
first known case in the Australasian colonies .
and galvanized the city into action:
Naturally, it shocked
both Smart and Hall immediately
3 P.P.R.S., 1865 , p. 33.