Thomas Borthwick brings bacteriology progress applied to Adelaide's public health advances from 1890s
The Thomas Elder bacteriology laboratory at Adelaide Children's Hospital in 1894 benefited from equipment transferred from Thomas Borthwick's home laboratory. Inset: The children's hospital and its wards such as Lindsay in the Angas Building brought new levels of care in the mid 1890s to Adelaide youngsters.
Inset images by Ernest Gall, courtesy State Library of South Australia
Thomas Borthwick steered significant public health advances in South Australia from the 1890s. An Edinburgh University medical graduate, he arrived in Adelaide, via South Africa, in 1883 and practised at Kensington.
From 1885, he was medical officer of health for Kensington, Norwood, St Peters and Burnside. His monograph, A Contribution to the Demography of South Australia, earned him an doctor of medicine degree from Edinburgh University where he began a course in practical sanitary science in 1891. He returned to Adelaide with the equipment for a bacteriological laboratory, possibly Australia’s first of its kind, at his home.
In 1894, Borthwick was selected for the new position of honorary bacteriologist at Adelaide Children's Hospital and his equipment was transferred to its new Thomas Elder laboratory.
In London in 1895, Borthwick studied the antitoxin treatment of diphtheria under Dr. G. Sims Woodhead, and he probably visited the Pasteur Institute in Paris to study diphtheria control. On his return, the new treatment was adopted by the children's hospital and the medical profession. Besides diagnostic work in the hospital, Borthwick lectured “with infinite patience and tact” to nurses on hygiene and bacteriology. His work with diphtheria showed him contagion lasted much longer than previously supposed and convalescents were detained until all fear of infection had passed.
In 1899, Adelaide University made him examiner in hygiene and lecturer in bacteriology until 1920. In 1902, he became honorary bacteriologist at Adelaide Hospital and consultant there in 1911. He resigned from the children's hospital as its emphases shifted from extensive to intensive medicine but continued to advise it on sanitary matters.
Borthwick brought about the Health Act 1898 that introduced notification of infectious diseases and set up a central board of health. He was also one of the first to recognise the act's practical weaknesses.
In 1900-24, Borthwick was the part-time medical officer of health for the city of Adelaide. He was also health officer for the metropolitan dairies board (later the metropolitan county board of food and drugs) and was appointed consultant medical officer to the metropolitan abattoirs board in 1913. He introduced inspection of dairies and licensing of milk vendors, started a mother and child health service, showed the need for a separate infectious diseases hospital, and regularised inspection of insanitary dwellings.
In 1922, he started a three-year campaign to rid the city's mosquitoes by compulsorily screening domestic water tanks and treating breeding grounds in the River Torrens. He also suggested creating a Greater Adelaide area for uniform action on such matters as hygienic food supplies. He always expressed his opinion emphatically and clearly and wrote several highly-respected papers on bacteriology and public health.
He was disappointed to be overlooked for the presidency of the central board of health, for political reasons. Borthwick suffered throat cancer but remained at his post until six weeks before his death at Largs Bay in 1924.
