CAMERA Seminars

CAMERA Seminars

CAMERA hosts regular research seminars as part of the School of Medicine Research Colloquia. These events encompass issues and research relevant to medical humanities and offer a great opportunity to hear from speakers on some fascinating topics. We welcome you to join staff, students and community members for these special events.

• Upcoming seminars
• Previous seminars

Upcoming CAMERA seminars

Upcoming CAMERA seminars will be announced here closer to the dates.

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Previous CAMERA seminars

2010

April

Notes from Batavia, the European’s Graveyard: The Debate on Acclimatisation in the Dutch East Indies, 1820-1860
Dr Hans Pols
Unit for History and Philosophy of Science
University of Sydney

Our next seminar features a well known historian of medicine and current President of the Australian and New Zealand Society for the History of Medicine (NSW Branch), Dr Hans Pols. ALL WELCOME!

Date: Friday, April 9, 2010
Time: 3-4pm, followed by drinks
Location: School of Medicine, 30.G.213, Building 30, Campbelltown Campus, University of Western Sydney

Soon after the conquest of Batavia in 1619, the city was nicknamed the “graveyard of Europeans” because of the unusually high mortality rate of soldiers and merchants there. Consequently, the Dutch East Indies company (VOC) maintained as few soldiers and officials there as possible. After the demise of the VOC in 1799, Batavia developed into a city of sorts—and the issue whether the Indies were suitable for European habitation came to dominate medical and civil discussions. Willem Bosch, the founder of the Batavia medical school in 1851 and chief of the Indies Civil Health Service, had calculated that Europeans who moved to the Indies sacrificed 60% of their life expectancy (for soldiers, it was a staggering 80%). A number of local physicians protested against these views by arguing that one could maintain one’s health by following a set of sensible rules. They believed that special attention should be given to individuals who had arrived recently, because they would be unusually vulnerable to disease during the period of acclimatisation.

In this paper I will analyse the often acerbic discussions between the advocates of these different perspectives, which was conducted in the first volumes of the first magazine that appeared in the Indies. Participants in this debate were the aforementioned Willem Bosch; the German explorer Franz Junghuhn, who charted vulcanos and produced the first map of Java; the irascible German physician Carl Waitz, who later advocated the water-cure as a cure-all; Cornelis Swaving, a physician known for his impenetrable prose, and Pieter Bleeker, a physician who later became famous as an ichtyologist.

Hans Pols received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and held post-docs at Harvard University, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and Rutgers University before accepting a position at the University of Sydney. He is interested in the history medicine, in particular the history of psychiatry. He has conducted research into the history of the mental hygiene movement, the treatment for shell shock or nervous breakdown in the armed forces during World War II, and on the history of medicine in the former Dutch East Indies and modern Indonesia.

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2009

May

Creative Music Therapy and Beyond
Dr Alan Lem

Dr Alan Lem is Course Advisor for the Master of Creative Music Therapy program and Manager of Clinical Training for Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Australia. He is a well-known music therapist, supervisor, lecturer and composer with deep interest in improvisational music therapy, music and imagery and music for health and well-being. Alan is also is a prolific author who published several music scores, educational guides and CDs for use in music therapy. His key publications appear in Music Therapy Collection, MusicMedicine 3 and the Journal of the Australian Music Therapy Association. Alan’s creative work featured on ABC Radio National's Health Report and international and national conferences of music therapy and music medicine. Alan is also an active member of the Australian Music Therapy Association serving currently on its National Education Committee. In 2008 Alan was engaged in a research project looking at the application of an interactive, dynamic sonification system within the framework of improvisational music therapy, and its role in enhancing emotional expression in people who have physical disabilities.

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July

The emergence of newborn intensive care nurseries in Sydney 1950s-1980s: Bridging a gap between obstetricians and paediatricians
Dr Bruce Storey

Dr Storey is a graduate of the Medical Faculty in the University of Sydney, and has postgraduate hospital experience in Sydney as well as paediatric training at the RAHC Sydney, Guy's Hospital London, and Johns Hopkins Baltimore. In Sydney he has specialised in the care of the newborn infant at RPAH/KGV and RAHC. Since his retirement from clinical work, Dr Storey has devoted his time to the study of history and philosophy of medicine, completing a MPhil at Sydney University and a PhD at UNSW.

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September

Medical humanities and the humanity of medicine
Professor John Hamilton

Professor Hamilton has been involved in many elements of medical education around the world during his career, in Canada, Zambia, Nigeria, the UK, and Australia, working with universities, the Population Health Nutrition Division of the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. In 1997, he completed 14 years as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and continues to chair the final clinical year of undergraduate medicine at Newcastle. He has also advised medical schools in many countries, including institutions in Vietnam, Iran, Papua New Guinea and Fiji. In 2006, Professor Hamilton was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to international medical education.

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October

Behave yourself! Writing risk in cancer policy
Dr Claire Hooker (presenter), Stacy Carter and Heather Davy

Cancers are a leading cause of mortality around the world. There is, therefore, considerable policy interest in preventing cancer incidence through communication with the public about how people can lower their risk of cancer. However, there have been few studies of how cancer risk is represented in health policy and communication, or of whether public conceptions of cancer risk fit with those of health experts and policymakers. This paper presents the results of a qualitative project investigating how cancer risk has been constructed in cancer policy documents from the OECD, and comparing this with lay conceptions of cancer risk as explored through an interview-based grounded theory study.

Dr Claire Hooker is the Coordinator of the Medical Humanities program in the Centre for Values, Ethics and Law in Medicine, University of Sydney. Her multidisciplinary research has explored the social context of responses to health risks and infectious disease. Claire has always been interested in the intersections between the philosophy of science and evidence on one hand, and the experiential aspects of health and medicine on the other. She is the author of Irresistible forces: Women in Australian science (MUP 2005) and coeditor of Contagion: Historical and cultural studies (Routledge, 2nd edition Pluto Press, 2002) as well as other articles and book chapters.

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November

Between the ideal and a living: Women in private medical practice, NSW 1890-1939
Dr Louella McCarthy

Despite being an archetype of the medical profession, private practice has so far lacked much systematic historical examination in Australia. In large part, this is a result of persistent difficulties in finding suitable sources of evidence, and the consequence has been a proliferation of impressions and guesses. Prime among them was the assumption that medical women simply did not go in for private practice. Various reasons have been put forward. Patient resistance has been suggested, alongside women’s own familial obligations closing off opportunities. For some historians, women doctors' reputed absence from private practice reflected the 'fact' that they lacked the will (or capacity) to 'compete' with men, while other scholars preferred to depict them as being 'forced out' of private practice. 

This paper aims to address these issues, drawing on evidence of women’s private practice in NSW between the 1890s and the 1930s. Besides challenging many of the assumptions which have tended to underpin discussions of medical women’s work, I will also examine how their situation changed across these decades.

Louella is currently Manager Community Engagement in the School of Medicine, University of Western Sydney, and a founding member of CAMERA. Her previous positions include Research Associate, Sydney University, and lecturer in history for UTS and UNSW. Her PhD (UNSW) was awarded in 2002 for a thesis in the History of Medicine. Since 2000 Louella have served on the executive committee of the NSW Society for the History of Medicine (currently past-president), and from 2005 as Councillor (currently vice president) of the ANZSHM.

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