Darcy Cowan's novel work in tuberculosis rehabilitation includes founding Adelaide's Bedford Industries
From the 1950 opening of the original Cowan Building, honouring founder and tubercolosis treatment campaigner, Dr Darcy Cowan, Bedford Group grew to become Australia's second biggest employer of people with a disability. The Cross of Lorraine, official symbol of the ongoing world-wide fight against tuberculosis, is above the entrance of the Cowan Building.
Darcy Cowan made tuberculosis and chest diseases his life work. As president of the South Australian branch of the British Medical Association, Dr Cowan’s constant forthright pressure saw the (Royal) Adelaide Hospital get a chest clinic in 1938. He became its physician-in-charge (1938-50).
In 1924-35, an honorary physician at the (Royal) Adelaide Hospital, Cowan had become increasingly absorbed with the toll that tuberculosis on young people. He visited the United States of America In 1937 to investigate methods of control.
In 1943, he criticised one tuberculosis ward in Adelaide for being next to a dusty coal-dump and with full view of the hospital mortuary. That year he founded the South Australian Tuberculosis Association and later helped to form the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis in Australia and forged links with kindred societies in Britain and America.
Almost single-handedly, Cowan founded Bedford Industries, a new factory (opened in 1950 on Goodwood Road in the Adelaide suburb of Panorama) offering rehabilitation of those afflicted with tuberculosis. Bedford Group became Australia's second biggest employer of people with a disability.
Assisted by philanthropist Josiah Symon, Cowan had earlier set up Northcote Home, a residence for children whose parents were in hospital with tuberculosis.
He never allowed politicians to forget tuberculosis issue with the National Campaign Against Tuberculosis. In 1947-57, he assisted the James Brown Memorial Trust which owned and managed Kalyra Sanatorium and Estcourt House, Grange.
Cowan was also a founding member of the Laennec Society in South Australia who commemorated him with a prize for research into respiratory disease.
