Drs Henry and Cecily Pickerill, Mother-Nursing, and Cleft Lip and Palate Surgery on Infant Patients at the Bassam Hospital, 1939-1967

I examine the pioneering work of New Zealand plastic surgeons Henry and Cecily Pickerill, specifically their establishment of the Bassam Hospital in 1939. For nearly thirty years this small, private institution provided reconstructive surgery for infants born with cleft lips and palates. The Pickerills’ solution to the problem of cross-infection (which plagued children’s wards in public hospitals) set them apart from their contemporaries: they insisted that mothers, rather than nurses, would provide the entirety of the infant patient’s care. I consider the changing rationale for “mother-nursing” – from physiological to psychological – and place the Bassam in a context of an evolving system of family-centred care.

Kirsty Clarke is an MA (History) student at the University of Otago. Her main research interests include social history of health and medicine in twentieth-century New Zealand.