A while ago I was researching family history for a relative and...

A while ago I was researching family history for a relative and came across a family that lost five children in 14 days to Diphtheria back circa 1866, following up on Diphtheria I found this transcription of ABC Lateline, it appears the Chinese had success treating it....


Published: 22/09/2003
Learning from the Chinese

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2003/hc12.htm

During the middle of the 19th Century, the British colony of Victoria was one of the epicentres of gold fever-the society was in a state of flux, in a transition mode. Peoples and cultures from various parts of the continent as well as other continents were flocking to the colony in their hundreds of thousands in search of gold.

From 1851-1859, the population in the colony jumped from 97,489 to more than half a million (521,070). There were local aborigines, settlers from Europe, New World, China and the Asia Pacific.

Medicine in the Victorian colony was diverse, plural, complicated and idiosyncratic. The indigenous Aboriginal healer treating his or her community co-existed with the allopaths, emerging scientific medicine men, homeopaths, chemists, dentists, herbalists, naturopaths and traditional Chinese medical practitioners who were then referred to as Chinese herbalists.

In the census of 1861, there were 61 Chinese herbalists, and aboriginal healers, while there 592 physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, oculises and dentists.

Diphtheria, a virulent bacterial infection which leads to the formation of a leathery membrane on the throat and sometimes fatal suffocation swept through the Victorian colony in the middle of the 19th Century. Most of the victims of the epidemic were children. In 1872, it was reported that 600 people perished annually from diphtheria in Australia. At this time, the epidemic also hit Britain, Europe, the Americas and China. The disease is referred in Chinese as bai hou (white throat).

As the diphtheria epidemic raged in the colony, a group of Chinese herbalists were thrown into the limelight for their success in the treatment of the disease.

News of the success of the Chinese herbalists with their treatment technologies- new to many of the British colonists-in the treatment of diphtheria, spread like wild fire throughout the colony. A letter written by a reader of the Australian Medical Journal and published in 1870 wrote:

My Dear Sir,

You have on former occasions been very kind to me, and this emboldens me to ask from you another favour. Diphtheria has been very prevalent here, and most fatal in its effects. The disease was equally virulent at Vaughn, where I formerly resided, and where my oldest son died of it. There was a Chinese doctor resident at Vaughn, who went about amongst the poorest at first, and latterly amongst the better class, blowing a powder on the diphtheric pellicles of those afflicted,. And am compelled to admit, through a world of prejudice, with great advantage to his clients I have spoken to several sensible, intelligent though unprofessional people, who all profoundly believe that there is "something in it." I have procured some of "Johns" magic powder, and if it is so be, that there is anything in it I hope that you will have the powder examined by some expert-I mean the parcel forwarded-and so that if there is any real virtue in the powder, we may reap the advantage therefrom and not permit "John" to have a monopoly of the glad tidings. Trusting that you will pardon my intruding on your valuable time. I am, my dear Sir, yours most truly.
J. Burn Malcolm, Hargreaves Street, Castlemaine, June 25th 1870.

Considering the severity of the diphtheria epidemic and the interests in the Chinese medicinal powder, on August 13, 1874, the Victorian Parliament debated a proposal to run a trial to establish the efficacy of the Chinese diphtheria powder. Subsequently, the Victorian Parliament decided to turn the trials. It was proposed that the trial of the powder be conducted by the Chinese herbalist Ah Sue who should be employed by the Government to run the project. It was proposed that Ah Sue administer the remedy himself. At the same time, the trial will be under the inspection of the (Western) medical men but without their interference.

Unfortunately, the responsibility of "ascertaining the value" of the diphtheria powder fell in to the hands of a Western scientific surgeon from the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Dr. John Blair.

Using the medical resources pf the Medical Society of Victoria, Dr. Blair secured four packets of the diphtheria powder used by Ah Sue and another Chinese herbalist by the name of Fee Mun. Then, using the laboratory facilities of the then Technology Museum he had the contents of the powder "qualitatively examined."

According to Dr Blair, the "Chinaman powder contains nothing new". It is

"composed of alum, carbonate of lime, nitrate of potash, sulphate of sodium, sulfate of copper, nitrate and chlorate of potash with camphor and mush added to give them odor."

Speaking before a meeting of the MSV, Dr. Blair boasted

"We know the nature of their composition, and can easily comprehend the mode of their action." …That when the powder is blown in to the fauces the preparation can act as astringents, caustics, or eschariotics"

In the hands of an ignorant man, Dr. Blair declared these local preparations would be productive of a grievous amount of harm.

After his 'expert technical interpretation' of the 'facts' emanating from the Technology Museum, Dr. Blair then followed with personal and racist attacks against the Chinese herbalists. He called Ah Sue an "ignorant pretender" who has "received no medical Chinese education whatsoever". He claimed that the powder they were using were substances for everyday use for throat disease which were picked up form the local chemist shops.

In 1874, Dr. Blair and his supporters no doubt saw themselves as developing and expressing a set of standards for medical practice and health care in the developing colony of Victoria. Given the complex situation of health care at that time, his application of standards was recognizable to many as interested and biased. It was recognizable to many as a form of standardization that amounted to the domination by the emergent empiric school of medical practice. This school was represented by a particular class in the colony at that time, the ruling class, who benefited from legislation which forbade anyone who did not hold "a bachelor of Apothecaries Society of London, a member of the College Physicians or Surgeons in the United Kingdom or Ireland, or had served in the sea or land service (of the British Empire)."

It is not that the system of traditional Chinese medical practice did not have standards, nor that it was not sensitive to standardization. It is that at this point in Australia's history these standards could not be worked with those that officially regulated practices of both medicine and health care. There needs to be a lot of translation work on both sides if standards from alternative traditions are to be articulated. That was the work that satisfied patients were doing with their testimony, work that was taken up by their parliamentary representatives. But equally work must be done if the standards are to be dis-articulated. That was the work of Dr. Blair's 'trial'. It opposed the work of those who were seeking to articulate the standards of Chinese medical practice in the colony of Victoria and it used the resources of the emerging scientific institutions of the colony.

- Rey Tiquia, Victoria.