Twenty Years A-Growing: An International Conference on the History of Irish Childhood from the Medieval to the Modern Age

This conference on the History of Irish Childhood will take place  at St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, Dublin, 9-10 June 2014.

Dr. Anne MacLellan, Director of Stair will be giving a paper on The Penny Test: Tuberculin Testing and Paediatric Practice in Ireland, 1900-1960:

The historiography of tuberculosis in Ireland has paid considerably more attention to the adult form of the disease than to childhood forms of tuberculosis. In adults the disease primarily affected the lungs; in children, tuberculosis commonly infected other parts of the body including bones and joints, the abdomen and the membranes surrounding the brain as well as being disseminated throughout the body in millet-seed-sized nodules in a form of the disease known as ‘miliary’ tuberculosis. In 1922, the year the independent Irish state was founded, the deaths of 611 children under the age of 15 years were attributed to tuberculosis.

Diagnosis was not always straightforward: this paper will discuss the use and neglect of tuberculin testing for the diagnosis of tuberculosis in Irish children. It will address the consequences of the relative neglect of this test by the Irish medical profession in the first half of the twentieth century. Children who were wrongly diagnosed as tubercular had to endure prolonged periods of bedrest, often in institutional settings, while children whose tuberculosis went undiagnosed were denied rest and treatment.

The increased focus on tuberculosis in children rendered paediatricians and their work visible. This paper will argue that the validity provided by addressing the needs of tubercular children contributed significantly to the development of paediatrics as a separate clinical specialism in Ireland. In particular, the paediatricians Robert Collis and Dorothy Price were active in highlighting the problem of childhood tuberculosis and in promoting the use of the tuberculin test. They were also founding members of the Irish Paediatric Club, the forerunner of the Irish Paediatric Association. Price’s chairmanship of the Consultative Council on Tuberculosis and the National BCG Committee ensured paediatrics and childhood tuberculosis were visible in Ireland at national level.

FOR MORE INFO SEE: http://irishchildhood.wordpress.com/ 

Pop-up Malaria Museum

Malaria Museum

Let’s Make Malaria History

The stars must have aligned just right when Marco Herbst met Andrew Lewis and Graham Fry  of the Tropical Medical Bureau. With Marco’s collection of malaria artefacts looking for a good home, and TMB’s wonderful top-floor space, it was too good of a coincidence to pass up. Vanessa Breen, with wide-ranging experience from her career in film and television, brand communication, and event organization, came on board to head up a team of creatives who will make the museum a truly unique experience, and Vincent Kenny, of Volunteer Missionary Movement lent his own experience have curated a similar project in the Royal College of Surgeons in the 80’s, the stage was set.

While the pop-up museum will coincide with World Malaria Day, on April 25^th, making Dublin part of a Global conversation about malaria, the Malaria Museum website will remain a permanent virtual space to bring together the different voices from around the world that are working to end malaria.

The Pop-up Malaria Museum, on the top floor of TMB’s Grafton Street headquarters, will take visitors into another world, far from the grey skies of Dublin. The story of malaria is a fascinating one; how far it once spread throughout the world, the mystery behind the disease, once thought to be caused by the bad air around swamps, and how that mystery was unravelled. The malaria museum will combine scientific information with a unique, off-beat visual style, to educate and entertain visitors in the life cycle of the parasite, the history and medications used to combat it, and the exciting future, with ground-breaking innovations promising a malaria vaccine that could save hundreds of thousands of lives in the very near future. The museum will aim to entertain, to educate, and, above all, to engage visitors and get them interested in the actions they can take to help in the worldwide fight against this disease.

Work by artist Fiona Byrne will form part of the exhibition.
Fiona is also a project manager for Stair: An Irish Public History Company

Malaria still kills hundreds of thousands each year, and though those numbers are dropping, there is much to be done. The Malaria Museum is a not-for profit organization, whose ongoing mission is to make malaria history. Working with corporate sponsors, and highlighting their vital work, we will curate the online space, growing it into a virtual community where ideas can be generated, shared, and refined. As we continue to expand the collection of artefacts, the pop-up museum will provide an ephemeral physical space to engage ever more people, 

and get them talking about malaria, and how

 we can come together to save lives.