October 2025

Emeritus Professor Sue Pullon, Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice (PHC&GP), University of Otago, Wellington.

Speaker –  David Abernethy    https://youtu.be/L7DVhhCUYGE

Anaesthesia Monitoring from 1970 – 2025

The Early Detection of Diagnostic Information

Michael Harrison

 

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

Barbara Brookes

June 2025

                                                                           

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.

Women Doctors on the Nineteenth Century Stage: Education and Entertainment

Barbara Brookes

June 2025

A talk on the creation of a new kind of women-only theatre that she (Longshore-Potts) and some other 19thC women doctors embarked on and why they did so.

Performing with Difficulty | presenter David Barker

May 2025

David Barker has been a Wellington resident since 2016 and NZ citizen since 2022, having moved from Australia “for the weather”. He is not a medical doctor but does have a Doctorate in Chemistry from the University of Newcastle. Music has been a lifelong passion, from the pop music of his childhood to a love of classical music which began in his 30s.

Mary Truby King’s Holidays in 1918 – The Armistice, Influenza and Christmas at Porirua – Clare Ashton

April 2025

Dr Marie Stopes: Pioneer of Sex Education and Family Planning | presented by Dr Aine McCoy

March 2025

To read presentation click here: Marie Stopes

Wellington Medical History Society Hospitals at Christmas: 1890-1940 | presented by Associate Professor Dr Jayne Krisjanous.

December 2024

Presentation Topic Hospitals focus on efficiency and effectiveness. It is fascinating though how hospitals located where Christianity is dominant create temporary spaces to celebrate Christmas. Here they seemingly loosen their grip on the usual rigid rituals and roles. This presentation focuses on the period 1890-1940. However, anyone today who has worked in a hospital over Christmas will have a story to tell!

Presenter Bio: Jayne Krisjanous is an Associate Professor of Marketing with a research interest in the history of health services. Jayne is also a non -practising nurse and midwife and the current Chairperson of the WMHS.

The History of Cardiac Electrophysiology in NZ | Lin Coleman

November 2024

Electrophysiology is the branch of physiology that studies the electrical properties of biological cells and tissues. It involves measurements of voltage. Remarkable work and research have been undertaken in the field of medicine. Where did it all begin and where are we now?

Lin trained in the UK at St Richards Hospital Chichester West Sussex. She has an extensive nursing career both in the UK and New Zealand. Lin has worked in a variety of specialities including Intensive Care, burns and plastics and cardiology. In the UK Lin was a sister in the Coronary Care Unit at King Edward the V11 Hospital in Midhurst West Sussex.

Immigrating to New Zealand in 1994, Lin worked as a Charge Nurse at Green Lane Hospital Auckland. Lin moved from Auckland to Wellington in 2007 and has worked in a variety of roles in Wellington Hospital and the community since that time. Lin is currently working as a Speciality Clinical Nurse: Cardiac Rhythm Management at Wellington Hospital and is passionate about cardiology nursing.

Eponymity | presented by Michael Harrison MD FRCA FANZCA

October 2024

Presentation Topic: Eponymity: The state of being identified and recognised by name. Some in this group of physicians were good, but some were not so good. Was the man above the former, or the latter?

Michael trained in the UK in anaesthesia.   He spent ten years there as a specialist in anaesthesia and intensive care, and in academia, before moving to New Zealand in 1987.   As an anaesthetist in Auckland he continued research in collaboration with Auckland University and with The Institute of Biomedical Technologies (IBTec), AUT.

Talks given to WMHS previously:

The Falkland War

Harrison – The 1950s BAA WMHS.ppt

British Academic Anaesthetists – the book

Iain Glen – Propofol

Herbert Barker – Manipulative Surgeon

2017	The Very Early History of Modern Anaesthesia
2018	James Young Simpson of Edinburgh
2021	Emergency Medicine in a cold climate, April 1982 The Falkland War
2023	The 1950s British Academic Anaesthetists

Medicine & Music: Die Young, Stay Pretty | presented by David Baker

September 2024

David Barker has been a Wellington resident since 2016 and NZ citizen since 2022, having moved from Australia “for the weather”. He is not a medical doctor but does have a Doctorate in Chemistry from the University of Newcastle. Music has been a lifelong passion, from the pop music of his childhood to a love of classical music which began in his 30s.
Presentation Topic: A survey of musicians across the centuries and genres who died at a young age from natural causes. The three shown above – Wolfgang Mozart, Karen Carpenter and Charlie Parker – all died in their thirties. The emphasis will be on their causes of death (from a layperson’s perspective) and looking at the myths surrounding some of their deaths. For each, there will be a short sample of their music.

President Garfield, Alexander Bell and the bullet | David Abernethy

August 2024

Foster Kennedy mentioned Horsley using a bullet probe to successfully locate and remove a bullet from the head of an attempted suicide. It caught my attention because FK clearly did not understand how the probe worked. In an effort to find out, I found it described by MacKenzie Davidson, an early radiologist/physicist, in the BMJ in 1900 but he reported he thought he heard about it in the Lancet many years earlier and built one himself, but the trail went cold.

I managed to discover Alexander Graham Bell’s failed attempts to use a metal detector to help the surgeons locate the bullet during President Garfield’s lingering death from an assassin’s bullet wound, and the mysterious and forgotten development of the telephonic bullet probe. For the rest of the story and its trail through the correspondence pages of the BMJ, Lancet (the Twitter of their day), the New York Times and Scientific American.

 The Legacy of Two Frenchmen | presented by Archie Kerr

July 2024

Presentation Topic:

A look at tuberculosis around the world and the development of BCG with a few surprises.

Presenter Bio: Archie was a General Paediatrician at Hutt Hospital from 1976 – 2008. He was actively involved with the Paediatric Society, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the Cystic Fibrosis Association. He is currently involved with the Menz Shed, Naenae and the Woodworkers’ Guild of Wellington. Other interests include History, Economics and the effect on our Society, and Liberal Christianity.

June 2024

Cancelled

William Borrowdale Tripe: An early Wellington Doctor | presented by Associate Professor Dr Jayne Krisjanous

May 2024

Jayne joined the WMHS in 2012 and was appointed Chairperson in 2019.   Jayne is on the academic staff of the School of Marketing and International Business at Victoria University of Wellington.   She is also a Registered Nurse and Midwife. Her interests in the history of medicine are broad and she finds all aspects of medical history and its interaction with the social structures of the day fascinating.   An area of particular interest is how medical beliefs and practices were influenced by the commercial environment of the Victorian era.

Talks given to WMHS previously have been:

2012	Phossy Jaw and Victorian Match Workers:  Alleviating a dreaded occupational disease by changing consumer purchasing preferences
2013	“Enjoy the war; the peace will be terrible!” The work of the UNRRA in the lives of Europe’s Displaced Persons post WW II
2014	Doctors as spokespersons in cigarette advertising
2016	Nurse Mackenzie’s photo album: what did she see? – with Jo Walton
2017	Stately Hospitals of the World Wars – the mortal wounding of the English Country Home
2018	Capturing hunger in the Dustbowl through the lens of Dorothea Lange
2019	Mary Toft’s Rabbets: Best Fake News Story Ever?

December 2023

A detailed description is not currently available for this presentation.

November 2023

October 2023

A detailed description is not currently available for this presentation.

A detailed description is not currently available for this presentation.

July 2023

A detailed description is not currently available for this presentation.

A detailed description is not currently available for this presentation.

April  2023

The collection of contraceptive items that were donated to Family Planning.

A detailed description is not currently available for this presentation.

British Academic Anaesthetists 1950-60 presented by Michael Harrison

March 2023

Wellington Medical History Society

British Academic Anaesthetists and their Research

The Anaesthetic Research Society emblem based on Mandragora officinarum

Anaesthesia is now very safe; it is safer now partly because of the research work that many academics carried out over the last seventy years, and partly due to improved training.

Michael Harrison has worked both in clinical anaesthesia and as a part-time academic since 1971. This presentation will cover a tiny fraction of the work carried out by British Academic Anaesthetists in the latter half of the 20^th century.

A history of the breast in art and disease | presented by Burton King

February 2023

A history of stroke management | presented by David Abernethy

December 2022

WW1 NZ Nurse Anaesthetists | presented by Associate Professor Dr Jayne Krisjanous

November 2022

Ettie Rout | prsented by Jane Tolerton

October 2022

“I have met an angel!”: The life and work of Kathleen Hall | presented by Noel Sulzberger

September 2022

The NZ Asthma Epidemic | presented by Professor Richard Beasley

August 2022

Soutra Aisle in the Scottish Borders | presented by Archie Kerr

July 2022

Jennifer Doudna and Gene Editing | presented by Peter Hatfield

June 2022

May 2022

April 2022

March 2022

April 2022

March 2022

December 2021

November 2021

August  2021

July  2021

June  2021

May  2021

April  2021

March  2021