Dorothy Stopford Price

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Eleanor Dorothy Stopford Price (born September 9, 1890 in Dublin , † January 30, 1954 ) was an Irish medic and vaccination pioneer .

biography

Family and education

Dorothy Stopford was born to Constance Stopford (nee Kennedy) and Jemmett Stopford, who worked for the British administration in Dublin; she had two sisters and a brother. The family was Protestant. Her maternal grandfather, Evory Kennedy, was director of Rotunda Maternity Hospital in Dublin from 1833 to 1840 . Jemmett Stopford died of typhoid in 1902 and the family who had lived near Dublin moved to London .

Dorothy Stopford attended Paul's Girls' School in London, and in 1915 she returned to Dublin to study medicine at Trinity College . During the 1916 Easter Rising , she was in Phoenix Park , the seat of the British Undersecretary for Ireland , Sir Matthew Nathan . She witnessed the events of that time and wrote down her experiences and observations in her diary ; their notes offer a "unique insight into how the 1916 Easter Rising was viewed from the perspective of a highly educated Protestant woman" ("... unique insight into the perspective of a highly educated Protestant woman on the 1916 Easter Rising"). Despite her appreciation for Nathan, she increasingly developed sympathy for the Irish rebellion against British rule. Dorothy Stopford's growing nationalist outlook was encouraged by her aunt Alice Stopford Green , a political activist.

In 1921 Dorothy Stopford finished her medical degree and started working in a pharmacy in Cork . In Kilbrittain she became a doctor for the local IRA brigade , took care of injured fighters and gave lectures on first aid to their women's society Cumann na mBan . As a Protestant she had numerous friends in Catholic, republican circles. In her letters she was amused by their various attempts to convert them to Catholicism. In 1925 she married Liam Price, a lawyer , district judge, and local historian from Wicklow . The marriage was reportedly happy, even if, according to reports from the niece, the couple kept discussing trifles and trying to outdo each other in the shared garden. The marriage remained childless.

From 1923 until the end of her life, Dorothy Stopford Price worked as a pediatrician in the two Dublin clinics Saint Ultan's Children's Hospital and Baggot Street Hospital .

Fight against tuberculosis

Tuberculosis had been rampant in Ireland since the 19th century , with the sickness peaking in 1904 when 12,000 young Irish people died from it. In 1922, the year the Free State was founded , the country recorded around 4,600 deaths from the disease. There was presumably a high number of unreported cases, as many people withheld the disease for fear of exclusion. In the first half of the 20th century, tuberculosis was the third leading cause of death in Irish children. However, tuberculin tests were considered unreliable in Ireland.

In 1931 Dorothy Stopford Price visited the physician Franz Hamburger at the General Hospital in Vienna , where she was convinced of the efficiency of the tuberculin tests. She attributed the skeptical attitude of her Irish colleagues to the fact that they would not read any German medical literature or visit clinics in German-speaking countries, but instead would only “take everything from England”. She herself began to learn German in order to read relevant textbooks and completed a postgraduate course in Scheidegg, Bavaria . She wrote: “It is extraordinary that tuberculosis in children should have been a closed book to Ireland for 20 years after methods of diagnosis were well established on the continent […].” (“It is remarkable that tuberculosis in children 20 years Long is said to have been a closed book for Ireland after diagnostic methods were established on the continent [...]. ”) In the mid-1930s, her interest in the tests was overshadowed by a commitment to preventive vaccination.

In August 1936 Dorothy Stopford Price traveled to Scandinavia with her husband Liam , where she visited clinics and laboratories and found out about the manufacture of the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine . In January 1937 she vaccinated two children with BCG; this was the first time this vaccine had been administered in Ireland. The so-called "Ring Disaster", in which schoolchildren contracted tuberculosis after being vaccinated against diphtheria by members of the Ring College in 1937 , was a backlash to Stopford Price's efforts and resulted in a negative attitude towards vaccination among the Irish public.

During World War II , Dorothy Stopford Price was unable to get a BCG vaccine, but continued to make her Irish colleagues aware of the vaccinations. In the early 1940s she tried to set up a National Antituberculosis League in Ireland. The Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid , supported the need for such a campaign, but rejected the prominent participation of Protestant doctors, including Stopford Price, in the league. His intervention meant that the league was never founded. In 1949, the new Minister of Health, Noel Browne, appointed Stopford Price to head the National Consultative Council on Tuberculosis to conduct a mass vaccination campaign against BCG.

Presumably due to stress and overwork, Dorothy Stopford Price suffered a stroke in 1950 and retained left-sided paralysis . In 1954 she suffered a second stroke, from the consequences of which she died two days later at the age of 63. Towards the end of the 1950s, tuberculosis was successfully contained in Ireland with the help of new drugs and better structures in the health sector. Public recognition for this went to Noel Browne and James Deeny , Chief Medical Advisor of Ireland.

Dorothy Stopford Price's medical diaries are kept by the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and her 1916 diary is in the National Library of Ireland .

Honors

Dorothy Stopford Price was nominated for the Léon Bernard Foundation Prize of the World Health Organization for her contribution to the fight against tuberculosis .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Dorothy Stopford Price. In: Women's Museum of Ireland. Retrieved March 22, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Catriona Crowe: Ireland's rebel doctor: Dorothy Stopford Price. In: irishtimes.com. July 5, 2014, accessed March 24, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h Rebecca Akkermans: Dorothy Stopford Price. In: The Lancet. November 2014, accessed March 23, 2020 .
  4. ^ Dan Buckley: The silent terror that consumed so many. In: irishexaminer.com. August 24, 2010, accessed March 24, 2020 .
  5. ↑ a b c d Dorothy Stopford Price and the Irish tuberculosis epidemic. In: dh.tcd.ie. Retrieved March 22, 2020 (English).
  6. ^ A b Dorothy Stopford Price 1890. In: irelandxo.com. January 30, 1954, accessed March 24, 2020 .
  7. ^ Project Information: The 1916 Diary of Dorothy Stopford Price. In: dh.tcd.ie. Retrieved March 25, 2020 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Price, Dorothy Stopford
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Price, Eleanor Dorothy Stopford (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish medic and vaccination pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH September 9, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Dublin
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1954