John Howard Lidgett Cumpston

Standing. 2nd from left: Joseph W. Mountin - 2nd from right: Henry E. Sigerist . Sitting. Left to right: John Howard Lidgett Cumpston , John A. Ryle , W. Dalrymple-Champneys and Janet Vaughan . --- In front of a clinic in Lahore in 1944.

John Howard Lidgett Cumpston (born June 19, 1880 in South Yarra , Melbourne , † October 9, 1954 in Forrest ) was an Australian doctor and government official.

Live and act

His parents were the kindergarten teacher Elizabeth Newman and the merchant George William Cumpston. He received his education at "New College" and "Wesley College" in Melbourne. From 1898 to 1902 he received medical training at the University of Melbourne and immediately turned to preventive medicine and public health. After working as a doctor at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Parkside Lunatic Asylum in Adelaide for about a year , he left Australia in April 1905 to study health care in other countries.

First he visited VG Heiser in the American-occupied Philippines . In London he received a diploma in health care and did research on scarlet fever and diphtheria. This research earned him an MD (PhD) in Melbourne in 1907. In January 1908 he married Gladys Maeva Walpole of Gormanston, Tasmania . The couple had seven children.

From 1907 to 1911, Cumpston was a doctor in the Central Board of Health for Western Australia. From 1911 to 1913 he was a quarantine doctor for Western Australia, then head quarantine doctor in Perth .

From 1921 to 1945 (retirement) Cumpston was Director General of the Australian Department of Health.

In autumn 1944 he was invited by the Indian colonial government to tour the country with a group of foreign doctors and analyze the structures of the local health system. This analysis served the Indian «Bhore Committee», which was founded in 1943 by Sir Joseph William Bhore (1878–1960), as an argumentation aid for a report completed in 1946 with recommendations for the development of a structured health system in India.

In 1949 Cumpston worked in Ceylon as a consultant for the development of a new health system, and in 1950 he traveled through South-East Asia on behalf of UNICEF .

literature

Michael Roe. Cumpston, John Howard Lidgett (1880-1954) . In: Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 8, (MUP), 1981 (digitized)
Dr. JHL Cumpston accepts health post in Ceylon . In: The Canberra Times, July 26, 1949 (digitized version)

Individual evidence

↑ Henry E. Sigerist. The Johns Hopkins Institute of the History of Medicine during the academic year 1944-1945. … III Field Work in Canada and India. In: Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Volume 18 (1945), p. 231
^ Henry E. Sigerist: Report on India. In: Milton I. Roemer (Ed.): Henry E. Sigerist on the Sociology of Medicine. MD Publications, New York 1960, pp. 288-296.

personal data
SURNAME	Cumpston, John Howard Lidgett
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Australian doctor and government official
DATE OF BIRTH	June 19, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH	South Yarra , Melbourne
DATE OF DEATH	October 9, 1954
Place of death	Forrest

[1] Henry E. Sigerist. The Johns Hopkins Institute of the History of Medicine during the academic year 1944-1945. … III Field Work in Canada and India. In: Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Volume 18 (1945), p. 231

[2] Henry E. Sigerist: Report on India. In: Milton I. Roemer (Ed.): Henry E. Sigerist on the Sociology of Medicine. MD Publications, New York 1960, pp. 288-296.