Adelaide doctors lead the way in 1870s/80s scientific approach that creates the Australian Medical Association
Adelaide doctors George Mayo, Thomas Corbin and William Hayward were part of the new scientific approach to medicine.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
As the heyday of homeopathy was passing in the 1870s/80s, a new generation of mainly Australian-born Adelaide doctors wanted with a more scientific approach to medicine.
These included Edward Stirling who returned to Adelaide in 1881 – after graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge, and admitted to the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons – to help found, with Joseph Verco, the university's medical school. They and others, such as William Gosse, George Mayo, Thomas Corbin, John Davies Thomas and William Hayward, set off a movement that would ultimately lead to the first annual general meeting of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) in 1962 at the University of Adelaide.
Those 19th Century South Australian doctors had a key role in forming what, many years later, became the Australian Medical Association (AMA).
Their work towards an active and better organised professional body in South Australia was rewarded in 1879 when invited to form the first Australian branch of the British Medical Association.
Over the next five years, the new branch had recruited about 80 members and it began to publish reports of its proceedings. It helped found a medical school in The University of Adelaide in 1885. It organised the first Intercolonial Medical Congress in 1887, coinciding with the South Australian Jubilee Exhibition.
The South Australian branch’s dispute with the state government, leading to boycott over Adelaide Hospital staff issues, showed its influence on health policy and legislation.
The branch started the evolution of national doctors’ organisation. In 1911, instigated by William Hayward, an Australian federal committee of the British Medical Association was formed to represent the interests of the state organisations in the developing national issues such as the commonwealth’s ideas for a national health system, hospitals and health insurance. This led eventually to the Australian Medical Association in 1962.
