Pins & Needles
THE BLOG OF THE GEOFFREY KAYE MUSEUM OF ANAESTHETIC HISTORY
Impacts of the pandemic on anaesthetic trainees
Dr Richard Seglenieks is an Anaesthetic Registrar at St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne. Here, he provides some additional reflections following on from a previous post in June 2020. I have found living and working through the COVID-19 pandemic stressful, and I know many...
Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy – The Legacy of J Marion Sims
Anarcha was 17 years old and went into labour with her first child. She struggled for three days before medical help was sought. When help arrived, it was a local doctor with no particular interest in reproductive health. In his own words, “[i]f there was anything I...
COVID-19 as an Anaesthetic Trainee
Dr Richard Seglenieks is an Anaesthetic Registrar at St. Vincent's Hospital Melbourne. Here, he records his reflections on the 'strange times' we're living and working in during 2020. We are living in strange times. It feels entirely inadequate, yet also...
History is happening now – collecting Covid-19
It’s easy to think of history as some inaccessible, distant past with little relationship to the here and now. It’s sometimes hard to reconcile the notion of ‘history’ with the world in its current state. The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted social behaviours, forced a...
The Development of Intensive Care in Newcastle, Australia
Dr Ross Kerridge is the Senior Staff Specialist in Anaesthesia & Perioperative Service, John Hunter Hospital, and Conjoint Associate Professor, Anaesthesia & Perioperative Medicine at the School of Medicine & Public Health, University of Newcastle. This is...
Isolation Jigsaws
A lot's happened in the last few months and jigsaws seem to be the activity of the moment. According to social media, everybody’s doing them. So, the Geoffrey Kaye Museum thought it was time to get on board the jigsaw bandwagon. We searched the collection for some...
Covid-19 and the museum
There’s a lot going on right now. You’re probably getting a lot of emails cancelling events you’ve been looking forward to for ages or outlining organisations’ responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. This is another one. The museum is part of the Australian and New...
Australian Women Doctors and the Scottish Women’s Hospitals
On Saturday, 21 September, 2019, the museum curator gave a presentation in Hobart to a meeting of COMA (Collection of Medical Artefacts). The presentation looked at the way women doctors from Australia became involved with the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign...
Portrait of Professor Kate Leslie – 2013
Professor Kate Leslie was ANZCA President from 2010 - 2012. At the end of each president’s term, the college commissions a portrait. There is now quite the collection of painted portraits dating back to 1992, when the college formally came into being. In this post,...
Sandakan Prisoner of War Camp WWII – Northwest Borneo
Dr Colin Chilvers is a Tasmanian anaesthetist, and was co-convenor for the 2019 ANZCA Annual Scientific Meeting, held in Kuala Lumpur. After the meeting, he took a well earned break and travelled to Sandakan in Northwest Borneo, where he visited the site of the former...
Congratulations to Dr Christine Ball, AM
Dr Christine Ball was one of the people honoured in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours. We've always known she was pretty special, and feel honoured that she gives so much of herself to the Geoffrey Kaye Museum of Anaesthetic History. It's also marvellous that she has...
Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine on the Thai-Burma Railway
When Singapore fell in February 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army suddenly found itself in control of some 60,000 Allied prisoners of war (POW), most of whom were British, Australian or Dutch. Approximately 22,000 POWs were Australian soldiers and among them were 106...
Women & Medicine Symposium – International Women’s Day
This is the museum’s first post for 2019, and it’s a really exciting one. We’re going to kick off this year with a full-day history symposium about women and medicine on International Women’s Day (8 March). It’s a pretty broad theme and, because of that, we’ve got a...
Portrait of Professor David A Scott, 2018
At the end of each president's term, the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) commissions a portrait. There is now quite the collection of painted portraits dating back to 1992, when the college formally came into being. In 2016, ANZCA Council...
The History of Women in Medicine at the 2018 Sydney ASM
For the last few years the museum has been attending the ANZCA Annual Scientific Meeting. It seems a natural place to fully launch our exhibitions, meet fellows and trainees, and promote the incredible history and heritage of the specialties of anaesthesia and pain...
Reading the Gwen Wilson Archive
In 2017 representatives from the Geoffrey Kaye Museum, Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, and Harry Daly Museum joined forces to present a session at the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine (ANZSHM) conference held at the Australian...
The Rare Privilege of Medicine – a new exhibition
On International Women’s Day we launched our new exhibition, The Rare Privilege of Medicine: Women anaesthetists in Australia and New Zealand. It’s a small offering, highlighting 10 women from the late 19th Century through to the mid 20th Century, but it also features...
The benefits of hands-on history
Jack Rayner is a 2nd year student of history at Swinburne University. Jack is a recent addition to the volunteer team at the Geoffrey Kaye Museum and has been attempting to take classroom skills into the real-world. His research will be contributing to a 2018...