To the Director-General Methodist Missions – Northern Territory The Methodist Overseas Missionary Society conducts four aboriginal missions and one half-caste settlement in the northern coastal homeland. The four native stations are maintained at a very low standard viewed from any aspect other than the comfort of the staff. The half caste settlement on the other […]
Retrospect – 50 Years since the 1924 Leprosy Survey [EN2/7]
DR. CECIL E.A. COOK. C.B.E., M.D., D.P.H., D.T.M & H. Formerly Commissioner of Public Health, Western Australia (1946-1949) A talk to the Association of State Medical Officers, July 8, 1974: First let me thank you for affording me the opportunity to join you this evening in your farewell to Bill Davidson with whom it has […]
Leprosy Scourge Let Loose
In the Western Australian Truth, THE PEOPLE’S PAPER Saturday July 5, 1924 Panic Conditions in Derby Lepers Mingling With Townsfolk and Spreading the Disease From the far North comes a cry which so far seems to have failed to impress itself upon metropolitan ears. Things seem to be in a parlous state at Derby and […]
A letter to the West Kimberly Roads Board [EN2/14]
Roebourne W.A. August 1, 1924 Secretary, West Kimberley Roads Board Derby Dear Sir, To say that I am amazed at the contents of your letter dated July 25th 1924, is to understate the truth. May I call your attention to the exact phrasing of my letter – which I may state I had intended to […]
Report on the proposed establishment of a Joint Lazaret at Darwin [EN2/25]
Cecil E. Cook M.B. Ch.M. D.T.M & H Wandsworth Scholar June 1925 Leprosy has been recorded in the Northern Territory since 1892, first in Chinese, and later in Aborigines from different localities. Until 1916 the practice appears to have been temporarily to isolate the former on improvised Quarantine grounds pending deportation to China, and to […]
Report on deaths at Hermannsburg Mission – 1929 [EN 3/45]
COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA (CENTRAL AUSTRALIA) OFFICE OF THE GOVERNMENT RESIDENT, ALICE SPRINGS, 2nd September, 1929 His Honour, The Government Resident, ALICE SPRINGS Your Honour, I have to report that, acting under instructions received by telegraph from the Minister through His Honour the Government Resident, Darwin, I visited the Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission on Friday and Saturday, […]
Medicine and the Australian Aboriginal: A Century of Contact in the Northern Territory [EN 4/3]
C.E. COOK, C.B.E., M.D. At the outset may I express my deep appreciation of the honour, implicit in your invitation to deliver the Herbert Michael Moran Memorial Lecture in Medical history? Conscious of this honour and its obligations, it is with some diffidence that I undertake the task. Leaving aside my personal shortcomings in preparation […]
The Commonwealth Government statement on Bleakley Report [EN 4/32]
Action taken for the welfare of Aboriginals in North Australia and Central Australia The jurisdiction of the Commonwealth Government in respect of aboriginals extends only to the aboriginals in North Australia and Central Australia. The aboriginals in the various States of the Commonwealth are under the control of the State Governments and the Commonwealth has […]
Re Mr Nelson’s speech in Parliament
COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA NORTHERN TERRITORY MEDICAL SERVICE, Darwin, 17th November 1933 His Honour, The Administrator of the Northern Territory, DARWIN My attention has been directed to the Hansard report of Mr. Nelson’s speech of his motion for the adjournment on 1st November, 1933, in which he attacked the Administration for, as he alleged, suppressing the […]
Native Administration and Public Health [EN 7/93, 94]
A report to the NHMRC Committee on Tropical Physiology and Hygieneby C.E. Cook, M.D., Commissioner of Public Health, W.A. (1948) Health control in the North and North-west of Australia is beset with special difficulties and necessities which are not met to the same extent elsewhere. (a) The major portion of the area is tropical in […]
The Native in relation to Public Health – 1949 [EN 6/34, 7/103]
Reprinted from The Medical Journal of Australia, April 30, 1949, page 569, read at a meeting of the Section of Public Health, Tuberculosis and tropical Medicine, Australasian Medical Congress (British Medical Association) Sixth Session, Perth, August 1948 By C.E. Cook, M.D., D.P.H., D.T.M. and H.,Commissioner of Public Health, Western Australia The importance of the Australian […]
Health and Native Administration
Formerly health administration and native policy were closely integrated. The principle was accepted that the functions of Health and Native Administration were fundamentally identical and the Chief Medical Officer was also the Chief Protector. Changes in the administrative establishment divorcing native administration from the Health Authority have deprived the latter of the opportunity either to […]