Dr Richard Rogers an extraordinary South Australian polymath: first with X-ray machine at his medical practice
Dr Richard Sanders Rogers (left), at 34, with the first X-ray machine in South Australia used at his Adelaide private practice from 1896. A Rogers biography (top middle) on his contributions including knowledge of Australian orchids (top right), World War I commander of 7th Australian Base Hospital at Adelaide's Keswick barracks, and visiting (holding bag) a Kangaroo Island family in 1902.
Images courtesy University of Adelaide and Native Orchid Society of South Australia
Richard Sanders Rogers was among South Australia’s most remarkable polymaths within the medical profession but beyond to become a world authority on Australian orchids.
Rogers, son of a contractor/mason from Lyndoch, was born in 1861, and, from 1879, attended Adelaide city’s Pulteney Street School where he became the first public schoolboy to matriculate, with Greek as a supplementary subject, earning a scholarship to Adelaide University. He gained a bachelor of arts (honours, first class) in 1882 at 20 and taught at Prince Alfred College before being admitted to the acclaimed Edinburgh University medical school. (Adelaide University medical school didn’t open until 1885.)
Rogers graduated in Edinburgh in 1887 when he married Jane Scott Paterson and returned to South Australia to start a general practice firstly at Port Wakfield and then, with a surgery, in Adelaide city’s fashionable Flinders Street. In 1893, Rogers adopted hypnosis within his treatments. The Advertiser in 1895 reported that Rogers "successfully removed a cyst from the breast of a young woman while acting as both a surgeon and hypnotist while she was awake and talking to assistants and witnesses.” Rogers, in 1903-06, demonstrated his mental telepathy and hypnotic powers to literary societies saying: 'The hypnotism I practised was scientific, not an exhibition of the black arts”.
Rogers also led by having the first private medical practice with an X-ray machine, imported a year after the discovery of X-rays by Dr Wilhelm Röentgen in Germany in 1895. The Advertiser (1896) reported on a public demonstration of the early X-ray equipment by Rogers in the presence of Adelaide University physics professor William Bragg. He gained more academic honours with an MD (doctor of medicine) from Edinburgh University (1893) and an MD and MA (master of arts) from Adelaide University (1897).
Rogers was appointed honorary physician to Adelaide Hospital in 1897 and served on its board 1896-1922. He did the 1909 a survey of the health of South Australian state schoolchildren that was highly regarded and influential. He also did a report titled “A medical survey of the feeble minded in South Australia”. In 1901, Rogers accompanied the South Australian Sixth Contingent to the South African War and during World War I, as lieutenant-colonel, he directed the 7th Australian Base Hospital at Adelaide's Keswick barracks.
Rogers was elected to the South Australian medical board; its president in 1932-38. He was a lecturer in forensic medicine at Adelaide University from 1919 until he retired at 78 in 1939. He was superintendent and visiting psychiatrist to Enfield Receiving House and Northfield Mental Hospital; also a consulting psychiatrist to all mental institutions (1929-42).
Rogers did “not wish the public to associate my name with lord mayors and politicians” but belonged to public institutions including the Museum, Public Library and Art Gallery of South Australia.
Early in the 20th Century, Rogers became intensely interested in native orchids as a hobby. With wife Jean, he frequently visited the Adelaide Hills to collect specimens they described and cultivated. Their searches extended to New Guinea and New Zealand. In 1906, Rogers had his first paper on orchids in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia. He was credited with discovering 85 species. Elected a fellow of the Royal Society of SA, he served as its president from 1920-22. In 1924, Rogers was elected fellow of the Linnean Society of London for many contributions on orchids and their taxonomy. Adelaide University honoured him with science doctorate in 1936.