Dying to Be Healthy

Description

A social history of medical advances in the Kentish Community-Published 2003 (420 pages)

This book opens up a world of anguish and pain from the past that present generations willl find hard to comprehend. Commencing with the harsh conditions experienced by the earliest pioneers while trying to clear their bush blocks in the Kentish district on the North West Coast of Tasmania, it goes on to describe how these settlers battled through those early decades without doctors, dentists, chemists, hospitals, undertakers, cemeteries or clergymen. The book lists most of the early bush nurses, midwives and local quacks, including various bush cures, home remedies and herbal concoctions prescribed for cures. It delves into the precarious conditions surrounding childbirth in the early days and considers why so many mothers and babies were so tragically lost. It also identifies the main killer diseases, along with the epidemics that tooks so many lives, especially children.The deaths of scores of old pioneers, parents, youths and children are included and the wretched complaints that killed them.

Dying to be Healthy tells how over the decades medical advances gradually improved the lifestyles of Kentish inhabitants and concludes very positively.  This is the first time, as far as the author is aware, that a comprehensive health history of an entire community has been documented in this detailed and descriptive way. Profiles on all the doctors, dentists and pharmacists who have practised in Kentish are included.  In telling hundreds of fanscinating family stories, this very readable book combines both the horrific and the hilarious. You won’t be able to put it down.