The first medical
research institute in Australia was established by the Commonwealth government in
Townsville in 1910. Under the Directorship of Dr Anton Breinl, the Australian
Institute of Tropical Medicine’s formal function was to further medical
knowledge of tropical diseases and to study the effects of the northern
Australian climate on the “white race”.
 |
|
The Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine,
in the grounds of the Townsville Hospital, was officially opened on 28 June
1913.
Source: U.S.
National Library of Medicine.
|
Austrian-born Breinl was highly qualified to lead the Institute, having conducted field research into tropical diseases in Africa and Brazil. While researching on the Amazon River, he contracted yellow fever and almost died. Additionally, Dr Breinl and a colleague were credited with developing a treatment for African “sleeping sickness”, a parasitic infection transmitted by the bite of the tsetse fly. Their treatment would become a building block for modern chemotherapy.
Breinl was at the
height of his career when he arrived in Townsville on 1 January 1910. The
Institute was set up in a modest, three-roomed building in the grounds of the
Townsville Hospital that had formerly been a wardsman’s quarters.
Breinl, who described
himself as a scientist, set about identifying the prevalence of diseases in
north Queensland, and found that Dengue fever was common and hookworm
infestation was prevalent, along with a certain amount of malaria. Other
diseases such as typhoid fever and leprosy were also present.
With further backing
from the Commonwealth government, plans for a new building were approved in
1912, and extra staff were appointed. Joining Breinl and his laboratory assistant
were a parasitologist, a biochemist and a bacteriologist.
 |
| Official opening of the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine in Townsville, 1913. Anton Breinl is seated front row, second from left. Photo: James Cook University. |
The official opening of the Institute in June 1913 was attended by a veritable who’s who of the Australian medical profession. At this time, the White Australia Policy was still very much a driver of national policy, which accounts for Queensland Governor Sir William MacGregor’s remarks at the official opening:
“Tropical diseases, although
important, occupy only a second place, and the main problem is whether
conditions of heat and light will permit the establishment of a working white
race,” Sir William said.
“The policy of
reserving Tropical Australia as a home for a purely white race is one of the
greatest and most interesting problems of modern statesmanship,” he said.
“A final proof of
whether this is practicable, time alone will furnish.”
“It is a matter of
common knowledge that a considerable number of white men have lived and worked
for many years in inland Tropical Australia, and have enjoyed good health even
under conditions that had been by no means favourable.”
However, not everyone
was pleased to have the Institute located in Townsville. One of the medical men
present at the opening of the facility, Professor Anderson Stuart, told the Sydney Morning Herald on his return from
Townsville that while he supported the Institute, he felt that it should have
been established in Sydney.
“I am still of the
opinion I have always held, that Sydney would have been a better place for the
Institute than Townsville,” Professor Stuart said.
“There are many
scientific laboratories, libraries, and scientific men here, so that the facilities
for the work of a scientific Institute would have been very great, whereas in
Townsville there is nothing of the sort,” he said.
In 1930, the Institute closed in Townsville and became part of the University of Sydney, though it was re-established in Townsville in 1987 at James Cook University.
