Tuberculosis brought out on first colonial ships to South Australia: William Light among early victims

The infectious diseases block at Adelaide Hospital in 1923
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

Tuberculosis was to the forefront of colonisation. The first South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register published in South Australia in 1837 reported the death of Harriet, wife of colonial secretary Robert Gouger, at Glenelg of consumption. Three years later, Colonel William Light died of the same cause.

Tuberculosis remained the main killer of adolescents and young adults until almost World War II.

In 1870, when the lunatic asylum moved from the present Botanic Gardens site Parkside, its Dickensian building became the consumptive home and cancer block as part of the Adelaide Hospital. It continued to operate as the place for patients in the terminal stages of tuberculosis and cancer until 1932 when it was closed and demolished in 1938.

Dr Joseph Verco, who had a special interest in chest diseases and was appointed to the hospital’s honorary staff in 1882, noted that medical and surgical cases – broken bones, pneumonias, typhoids, bad eyes – were all mixed side by side in wards as patients were placed in the next available vacant bed.

The same applied to tuberculosis patients who were treated in the general medical wards of Royal Adelaide Hospital until 1942, with long-term patients going to Kalyra Sanitorium and Bedford Park.

The first outpatient tuberculosis clinic was in the lodge of the old consumptive home on the south east corner of the Botanic Gardens in 1917. This continued to operate until the new chest clinic was opened in 1938. 

The tuberculosis problem kept growing in South Australia after World War I.