Edward Charles Stirling a brilliant all-round scientist; helps start Adelaide University medical school in 1885
Professor Edward Stirling, a promoter of women's rights, pictured with students and to the left of Laura Fowler, the University of Adelaide's first woman medical and surgery graduate in 1891.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
Edward Stirling became one of Australia’s best all-round 19th Century scientists – with contributions to medicine and anthropology.
Born into his father's pastoral wealth in 1848 at Strathalbyn, south of Adelaide, Stirling was educated at St Peter’s College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a bachelor of arts with honours in natural science in 1869, master of arts and bachelor of medicine in 1872, and doctorate in medicine in 1880.
Stirling was admitted as a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1874 and was lecturer in physiology and assistant surgeon at St George’s Hospital, London, and later Belgrave Hospital for Children, London.
Stirling visited South Australia in 1875 where he married Jane, daughter of significant pioneering pastoralist Joseph Gilbert in 1877, and later took her to London for specialist medical treatment.
Stirling returned to Adelaide permanently in 1881. He became a consulting surgeon at the Adelaide Hospital, and was instrumental in the 1883 founding of a medical school at the seven-year-old University of Adelaide. He was the first lecturer in physiology, and served as the first professor of physiology from 1900, occupying the chair until his death.
He also sat on the university council from 1881 to 1919, and served as dean of the faculty of medicine 1908-19.
Among his many interests, Stirling was committee chairman (1884-85) and director from 1885 of the South Australian Museum. He built up there a remarkable collection including invaluable specimens relating to Aboriginal life.
In 1890, he went overland with South Australia's governor Lord Kintore from Port Darwin to Adelaide and collected flora and fauna including specimens of marsupial mole notoryctes typhlops. In 1893, he investigated the Lake Callabonna fossil boneand, with A.H.C. Zietz, reconstructed the skeleton of the enormous marsupial diprotodon australis. Stirling and Zietz described five new species of Australian lizards.
In 1894 Stirling was the medical officer and anthropologist of the William Horn scientific expedition to Central Australia.
Among his many other contributions to South Australian society, Stirling as a member of its parliament's House of Assembly, introduced the first bill in 1886 to give women the vote.
