GIGANTIC WORK

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 135, 9 June 1937, Page 17

GIGANTIC WORK

WOMAN DOCTOR'S TASK

SOLDIERS' CLINIC IN SYDNEY

Entering upon its sixteenth year, the clinic established in Sydney by Dr. Katie Ardill Brice, shortly after her return from the war, has been responsible for the treatment of thousands of cases of -illness among the dependants of returned men (states the "Sydney Morning Herald"). Recently, as a result of recognition by the Government, in the form of a subsidy, the clinic was moved from its rent-free position in the basement of Buckland Chambers to a higher floor.

Dr. Brice had just left hospital when the Great War broke out, and she tried to enlist with the A.1.F., but was told that she would have a base hospital position, as no women doctors wouldbe taken overseas. Determined to reach the front, the young doctor borrowed sufficient money for her fare, as her father refused to allow her to go. She set out armed with a letter to Sir George Reid, who' sent her to • Sir Frederick Treves, and she was quickly drafted to France, arriving there during 1915. Dr. Brice served with the British Army in Egypt and France, and ' also nursed in England, for four aiid a half CLINIC ESTABLISHED. "There is a clinic similar to the one I. established in England, for the permanent army, where their,wives, and children can be treated,' so when I. re-J turned I |sked the permission of the Returned Soldiers' League to start one. here," said Dr. Brice. - . On an average she sees 80 patients for-the., one, day on., which., the clinic, is opened, but sometimes there are 120 to be dealt with. "We start at 12.30 p.m., and I am lucky to be home for dinner at 8.30 p.m.," stated Dr. Brice. A returned army sister (Mrs. Munden) and another nurse, Mrs. Baker, are the doctor's only assistants. "I have just had the unique experience of attending the daughter of my first Australian soldier patient, when her little son, and his first grandson, was .born. Now I find that the children who attended the clinic in its early days are married women, and I am attending their children." Special attention is given to the preschool child at the clinic, as these children pass out of the hands of the baby health centres at two years of age, and are not always examined until they attend kindergartens. It is claimed that this is the only clinic in Australia that is doing this work. The pre-natal work cC the clinic has a special value, as obstetric cases are sent to a hospital at which Dr. Brice is an honorary doctor. During the fifteen years that the clinic has been established no mothers have been lost, and the only death on record is that of a premature, baby. Patients are sent from the auxiliaries of the Returned Soldiers' League, and come mainly from industrial areas. Dr. Brice, who. was the only Australian'woman doctor in France during the Great War until 1917, when Dr. Hamilton Brown was appointed, was. entertained by the auxiliaries of the Returned Soldiers' League recently.