Elsie Dalyell

Elsie Jean Dalyell

OBE
Born(1881-12-13)13 December 1881
Newtown, New South Wales
Died1 November 1948(1948-11-01) (aged 66)
Greenwich, New South Wales
Branch
World War ISerbian Campaign
Alma materUniversity of Sydney

Elsie Jean Dalyell OBE (13 December 1881 – 1 November 1948) was an Australian medical doctor who specialised in pathology. During World War I, she served in the Royal Army Medical Corps across Europe, and was appointed an Officer of Order of the British Empire upon the conclusion of the war. In 1927 she co-founded a veneral disease clinic.

Early life and education

Dalyell was born in 1881 in Newtown, New South Wales.[1][2] Her parents were James Melville Dalyell, a mining engineer, and Jean McGregor. She attended Sydney Girls' High School under its first headmistress Lucy Garvin.[3] She matriculated to the University of Sydney, where she studied arts and science for a year, intending to become a teacher,[4] before transferring to medicine in 1906. During her time at the university, she was a resident of The Women's College,[1] which she shortly after described as "the most pleasant [time] in my life".[5] She received her Bachelor of Medicine in 1909,[2] becoming one of the first women in the faculty to graduate with first class honours, and completed a Master of Surgery in 1910.[6]

Career

After graduation, Dalyell took a position demonstrating pathology at the university.[3] Her first professional position was as a resident medical officer at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.[4] In 1912 she became the first Australian woman to receive a Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research,[4][5] which took her to London to complete research at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine,[1][7] for research into gastroenterology in children.[5]

When World War I broke out, Dalyell left the institute to join the war effort, but her services were refused by the War Office.[4] She instead joined the Serbian Relief Fund and travelled to Skopje, Macedonia, in 1915 to help in managing the typhus epidemic of the time.[1] After the hospital that she had been working in was overrun by the Bulgarian army,[4] Dalyell joined the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service in 1916 and the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1917. Together, these commitments took her to France, Greece, Malta and Turkey.[1] The RAMC placed her in charge of a laboratory in the 63rd General Hospital in Thessaloniki, a level of responsibility that had not previously been given to women.[8] In 1919 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) and was decorated by the Government of Serbia.[6] Dalyell returned to Australia in 1920.[8]

Dalyell then took up a senior clinician role with the research mission group of the Accessory Food Factors Committee in Vienna,[9][10] led by Harriette Chick.[1] She described the clinic as "the most scientific infant clinic" with "the most highly trained staff in the world".[11] There she completed extensive research on paediatric malnutrition-related diseases, including rickets.[1][4][12] In 1923 Dalyell returned to Sydney for a lecture tour, but then found she had very few job opportunities.[1] Her attempt to open a private practice failed, and she was eventually hired by the New South Wales Department of Public Health as a senior assistant microbiologist in 1924.[1][4]

In 1926 Dalyell and Marie Montgomerie Hamilton who was an assistant medical officer began research concerning veneral disease in women. Treatment was difficult as penicillin would not be available for many year.[13] Dalyell was a committee member of the Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children from 1925 to 1935,[6] and in 1927 she and Hamilton started a clinic for venereal diseases at the hospital.[13]

During World War II, Dalyell organised the Blood Transfusion Service for the Red Cross.[4]

Dalyell Street in the Canberra suburb of Chisholm is named in her honour.[14]

Personal life

In her later life, Dalyell lived in Greenwich, New South Wales. Her nieces, Elsa and Lindsay "Jean" Hazelton, lived with her until Jean died by suicide in 1931.[15] Dalyell retired in 1946 and died on 1 November 1948 of hypertensive heart disease complicated by a coronary occlusion.[1]

Selected works

  • Dalyell, Elsie Jean; Chick, Harriet (1921). Hunger - osteomalacia in Vienna, 1920 : its relation to diet. London: The Lancet.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Mitchell, Ann M. (1981). "Dalyell, Elsie Jean (1881–1948)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7. ISSN 1833-7538. OCLC 70677943. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  2. ^ a b Pajic, Bojan (24 March 2019). Our Forgotten Volunteers: Australians and New Zealanders with Serbs in World War One. Australian Scholarly Publishing. ISBN 978-1-925801-44-6.
  3. ^ a b "RETURN OF DR. DALYELL". The Sydney Morning Herald. No. 25, 777. 17 August 1920. p. 4. Retrieved 31 August 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Crofton, Eileen (4 July 2013). Angels of Mercy: A Women's Hospital on the Western Front, 1914-1918. Birlinn. pp. 167–170. ISBN 978-0-85790-616-8.
  5. ^ a b c "THE BEIT FELLOWSHIP". The Sun. No. 778. Sydney. 23 December 1912. p. 12 (FINAL EXTRA). Retrieved 31 August 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
  6. ^ a b c "Elsie Jean Dalyell". University of Sydney. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  7. ^ Australasian Medical Gazette: The Journal of the Australasian Branches of the British Medical Association. L. Bruck. 1914. p. 131.
  8. ^ a b "DR. ELSIE DALYELL". The Mercury. Vol. CXIII, no. 15, 864. Tasmania. 4 September 1920. p. 12. Retrieved 31 August 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
  9. ^ Klich-Kluczewska, Barbara; Puttkamer, Joachim von; Rebitschek, Immo (21 October 2022). Biopolitics in Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th Century: Fearing for the Nation. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-000-77417-7.
  10. ^ Sundberg, Richard J. (31 March 2017). The Chemical Century: Molecular Manipulation and Its Impact on the 20th Century. CRC Press. p. 408. ISBN 978-1-77188-367-2.
  11. ^ "Dr. Dalyell's Lecture". The Sunday Times. No. 1942. 22 April 1923. p. 14. Retrieved 31 August 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
  12. ^ Creese, Mary R. S. (1 January 2000). Ladies in the Laboratory? American and British Women in Science, 1800-1900: A Survey of their Contributions to Research. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-585-27684-7.
  13. ^ a b Stell, Marion K., "Marie Montgomerie Hamilton (1891–1955)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 23 October 2023
  14. ^ "Schedule 'B' National Memorials Ordinance 1928-1972 Street Nomenclature List of Additional Names with Reference to Origin: Commonwealth of Australia Gazette. Special (National : 1977 - 2012) - 8 Feb 1978". Trove. p. 11. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
  15. ^ "RADIO CALL". The Sun. No. 6319. Sydney. 11 February 1931. p. 9 (LAST RACE EDITION). Retrieved 2 September 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
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