What Killed Jane Austen?: And Other Medical Mysteries by George Biro and Jim Leavesley Read Free Book Online Page B

bike which charged a battery, gave most of our light. We built our anaesthetic machine from a pickle bottle, a car footpump, a football bladder, the Y-piece from a stethoscope, an eye-dropper glass and rubber tubing. It worked really well.
    I removed many cataracts; trachoma I treated with surgery and zinc sulphate drops that cost threepence.
    Twelve times a day, out two water carriers made their round trip of over three kilometers. Each carried 36 litres in petrol cans. Twice a week, the mailbag came, along the paths where lions and rhinoceros prowled.
    The dry season lasted eight months and ended in October with torrential rain. Within minutes, a parched riverbed became a torrent. Within two days, grass would grow. We built water tanks to see us through the next dry, only to see them cracked by an earthquake. In one hour, we helplessly watched three months’ water disappear.
    Once sulphonamide drugs were discovered, we could fight the next epidemic of meningitis.
    Our second child Rosemary was born in 1939. After my wife’s illness forced us to return home, Wellesley Hannah came to Tanganyika to take over from me. He stayed 20 years.
    Dr White’s Jungle Doctor books numbered 54 and have appeared in over 100 languages. In 1977, he published an autobiography titled Alias Jungle Doctor . Later he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for services to religious welfare. Dr White died in 1992, at the age of 82.
    (GB)
Bertram Wainer, abortion law reformer
    I did not set out to be a reformer; I … became involved with a law which was inflicting human suffering (Bertram Wainer)
    Melbourne, 1968. She was 21, and had already had a baby at 15. Now she was pregnant again. Terrified of telling her father, she took an overdose and landed in a psychiatric hospital. Then she threatened Dr Bertram Wainer that she would kill herself if he didn’t terminate her pregnancy.
    Not only did he do the abortion, but he told the Press, the Homicide Squad, the Chief Secretary and the Attorney-General. Dr Wainer was relying on a 1969 judgment of Mr Justice Menhennitt: ‘A lawful abortion is one believed by the doctor to be necessary to preserve the woman from serious danger to her life or her mental health.’
    Dr Wainer’s challenge did not provoke any legal response, but it marked his entry into the campaign that Australian women were fighting for the right to legal abortions done openly by capable doctors.
    In the 1960s there were about 70,000 women having abortions in Australia each year; many abortions were performed by unqualified abortionists.
    Dr Wainer fought against strict abortion laws and their narrow interpretation. He fought also against the police corruption that he felt was a consequence of those laws. By proving the extent of police corruption feeding on undercover and backyard abortionists, he forced society to face both issues.
    His efforts helped to clean up the Victorian police force and to bring about a more liberal interpretation of abortion laws. (Nowadays, in most states of Australia, a woman can get an abortion on demand, in the early stages of her pregnancy, if her physical or mental health is in danger.)
    Wainer’s outspoken views brought him abuse, vilification, threats and even attempts on his life. The Australian Medical Association found him guilty of unprofessional conduct. Rumours said he was mad and had a criminal background. Criminals shot at him and tried to run him over. For years he lived in fear of his life.
    What made a man fight at such personal cost for the right of Australian women to have safe and legal abortions?
    His background gives us some clue. His father died soon after Bertram Wainer was born in Edinburgh in 1928. His stepfather was an illiterate alcoholic. Bertram’s mother’s sweet shop failed during the Depression, forcing the family to live in the slums of Glasgow.
    The Second World War added more traumas. During the Blitz, young Bert and his mother were caught in an air raid away