Category Archives: Science > Medicine

After general nurse training at Christchurch Hospital from 1911 to 1914, Anne Pattrick took a four-month course at the Karitane-Harris Hospital for babies in Dunedin. It had been set up by Frederic Truby King in 1907 to train nurses for the Society for the Promotion of the Health of Women and Children (later the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society). Marked by King as having outstanding qualities, Pattrick was immediately appointed to the staff.
She served during the First World War, departing on the hospital ship Marama in 1915. While on active service she became engaged to be married to an Australian soldier, but he was to die in England in the 1918 influenza epidemic. During the war King had been invited by the British government to set up in London an infant welfare centre along Plunket lines, and he chose Pattrick to help him. Accordingly, she was released from army service in January 1918 and appointed matron of the Babies of the Empire Society’s new Mothercraft Training Centre, a position she held until 1920. This centre, subsequently named Cromwell House, grew to be an important model for infant welfare work in Britain.

After postgraduate study at Dublin University, around 1908 she commenced general practice in Picton.
There Paterson demonstrated her ability to command affection as well as respect from a wide range of individuals. A farewell social held for her in 1912 was ‘one of the most largely-attended and enthusiastic gatherings ever held in Picton’.

In 1909 or thereabouts the Pilgrims went to live in Palmerston North, where Ada Pilgrim was listed in directories as a ‘specialist’; then, some five years later, they moved to Auckland. She bought a handsome villa on Khyber Pass Road to which a constant stream of people came for treatment. Ada Pilgrim’s method of healing was a form of physiotherapy before that term was in general use. She was able to relieve complaints such as tic douloureux which were resistant to conventional treatment. Many of her patients were sent by medical practitioners, whose respect she had quickly gained. She continued to work as a healer after her husband’s death in 1926 and was practising well into her 80s. She believed that she had a gift, a kind of energy, which it was her duty to use. She was adept not only at relieving pain but also at giving reassurance and reconciling patients to that which could not be cured.

In 1886 Adelaide Hicks moved to Factory Road, Mosgiel. There she opened a maternity home, which became the first registered in the area. Adelaide became known as ‘Nurse Hicks’, and although she possessed no formal nursing training was regularly called on in times of medical and social crisis. Her midwifery took her into the small local community and out into the district, where she attended confinements.

With extra tuition from family friends in chemistry and Latin she matriculated in 1894 and entered the University of Otago to study medicine. In 1900 she graduated with three other women: Constance Frost and Jane Kinder (who took up residents’ positions at Adelaide Hospital), and Daisy Platts (who registered and set up practice in Wellington). Only two other women had obtained degrees in medicine in New Zealand before this time: Emily Siedeberg and Margaret Cruickshank.

Agnodice is believed to be the first female midwife or physician in ancient Athens.