Brisbane Diseased: Contagious Cures and Controversy
A number of the papers deal with the role that moral and social panics have played in the history of urban health, particularly when it came to diseases that inspired high levels of fear.
The book also highlights the important role that governments have played in determining the extent to which public health was successfully guarded.
Topics covered include: diseases at the Moreton Bay penal colony; local indigenous health remedies; nineteenth-century quarantine efforts; venereal disease; the bubonic plague; Dr T. P. Lucas, inventor of the famous papaw ointment; Spanish influenza; medical quackery; lead poisoning; the recognition of alcoholism as a disease; Brisbane’s pioneering medical corsetry industry; Sister Elizabeth Kenny’s work with polio victims; and the development of forensic pathology in Brisbane