Hospitals opened for both tuberculosis and other infectious diseases on large Northfield site in 1932
The Northfield hospitals for tuberculosis (Morris Hospital) and other infectious diseases were built on a large area of previous grazing paddocks on Hampstead Road, Northfield.
Two Adelaide hospitals – one for tuberculosis patents and one for other infectious diseases – were built from the late 1920s on land at Hampstead Road, Northfield, previously used by butcher shops owner Leopold Conrad to graze stock.
The first hospital, opened in 1932, was originally called the Advanced Consumptive Home and Cancer Block (or the TB Hospital). It was given the less-distressing name Morris to salute the work of a former hospitals inspector general Dr B.H. Morris.
With Dr J. G. Sleeman in charge (1925-37), the Morris Hospital represented giant strides from the 1880s when Adelaide Hospital placed all surgical and medical cases – Broken bones, pneumonias, wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, typhoids, hip diseases, bad eyes – randomly in the same ward.
Da Costa and Yates wards the first Adelaide Hospital contagious diseases wards and the former lunatic asylum on the south east corner of the present Botanic Garden in 1870 became the consumptive home and cancer block as part of the Adelaide Hospital. The Dickensian building continued to be used until Morris Hospital opened in 1932.
The Kalyra Sanatorium, opened by the James Brown Memorial Trust in Belair, in 1894 for tuberculosis sufferers. With tuberculosis peaking between the world wars, former servicemen were sent to Angorichina Hostel in the Flinders Ranges Parachilna Gorge as a first organised tuberculosis rehabilitation in South Australia, promoted by Dr Darcy Cowan.
Northfield’s second hospital, the Metropolitan Infectious Diseases Hospital, was built to replace the overcrowded infectious diseases block at Adelaide Hospital. In South Australia, polio was proclaimed a notifiable disease in 1922 in response to the first large epidemic, with many hospitals unable to cope with isolating patients.
The large infectious diseases hospital wasn’t a government venture but controlled by the metropolitan board of health and financed by local councils. In its first 10 years, the hospital treated 1,000 patients a year. Most patients were suffering from diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough, erysipelas (skin infection), chicken pox and tonsillitis.
In 1934, of 352 patients admitted with diphtheria, 10 died. The hospital in 1936 faced a diphtheria epidemic and accommodating many polio cases the next year.