Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white silent clip shows some of the buildings, wards and patients at the Austin Hospital at Heidelberg in Victoria. A panning shot shows the exterior of the Davis Wing, a large two-storey building with balconies, for female patients with consumption. A ‘ward’ on one of the balconies reveals nurses attending patients who lie in wheeled beds. Cheerful animated patients are shown in close-up. An intertitle then introduces the Kronheimer Wing for male patients with consumption. A slow pan shows the interior of a dark ward with many beds.

Educational value points

• This clip provides some insight into the treatment for tuberculosis (TB), then called consumption, in the 1920s before drugs were available to treat the disease. Patients are in beds on open verandas for what was then the standard treatment, which was fresh air, bed rest and good nutrition. Exercising the lungs by breathing clean air, and resting and eating well were thought to strengthen the sufferer’s immune system to enable it to fight the infection.

• At the beginning of the 20th century, TB was a major cause of death in Australia, the second most common cause for men and the most common for women. At the time of the film there was no drug treatment for TB. The bacterial infection, spread by sneezing, coughing or even talking, was extremely contagious and primarily attacked the lungs. Those with weakened immune systems living in crowded unsanitary conditions were particularly at risk.

• The clip takes us inside an important Melbourne institution, the Austin Hospital for Chronic Diseases, to showcase its treatment for chronically ill patients in the 1920s. This public hospital was founded in 1882 as the Austin Hospital for Incurables to treat those with TB and cancer, the only one of its type in Australia. In the 1920s it began experimenting with X-ray treatment for cancers and by 1935 was the largest cancer hospital in Australia.

• The film footage provides a valuable visual record of hospital environments in the 1920s. Slow panning shots show the exterior of buildings and the layout of wards. The leisurely close-ups in the Davis Wing provide candid portraits of female patients recovering from TB in their beds on a balcony. The clip reveals the activities of staff as they attend their patients with no sense of staging.

• The clip does not reveal the stigma then associated with the highly contagious disease of tuberculosis. Hospital staff who treated TB patients were regarded with caution outside the hospital. An account of the history of the Kronheimer building, built to house male TB patients as part of the Austin Hospital, reports that for years Heidelberg residents, fearing infection, would not walk on the south side of Banksia Street if the wind was blowing from the north.

• The Kronheimer Wing, part of the Austin Hospital and shown in the clip, was funded through a donation of £5,000 in 1903 from Joseph Kronheimer, a wealthy tobacco importer and philanthropist. Despite objections from local residents, the Wing was built in 1905 to provide more beds for TB patients.

• Most Australian public hospitals were started by appeals that relied on public subscriptions, private philanthropy and some government funding. Elizabeth Austin (1821–1910) became the ‘founder’ of the Austin Hospital by donating £6,000 to launch an appeal for a hospital for those with incurable diseases. The Hospital was the eighth public hospital founded in Melbourne and aimed at providing medical services to the poor. Those who could afford to pay went to private hospitals.

This clip is silent.

The camera pans across the exterior of the Davis Wing – the wing which houses female consumptives – before showing patients in their beds on the outdoor veranda. Staff and patients are filmed in close-up, with many of them laughing and smiling at the camera (if a little self-consciously). An intertitle introduces the Kronheimer Wing for male consumptives which contains 80 beds. The exterior of the wing is shown as well as part of the inside wards.