Defining Disease, Segregating Race: Sir Raphael Cilento, Aboriginal Health and Leprosy Management in Twentieth Century Queensland

Abstract

In Australia, as elsewhere, modern scientific studies of leprosy were firmly located within contemporary race-based and climatic medical theories, and were closely aligned to the discipline of tropical medicine.[1] During the interwar period the race-based leprosy theories of doctors Cecil Cook and Sir Raphael Cilento directly informed leprosy management strategies in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.[2] In the Queensland context, the emergence of these racially discriminatory medical theories helped solidify the Queensland government’s commitment to spatial segregation as its primary method of managing leprosy. Moreover these theories served to reinforce existing white perceptions about Aboriginal people and re-articulate the idea that Aboriginal ill health was an inescapable consequence of racial weaknesses. Sir Raphael Cilento, well known for his association with tropical medicine and social hygiene in Australia in the first half of the twentieth century, also played a pivotal role in the maintenance and alteration of the Queensland government’s Aboriginal leprosy management strategies during the 1930s.[3] Historians have generally overlooked Cilento’s involvement in leprosy management, and perhaps more significantly failed to explore the operations of Fantome Island leprosarium, the institution Cilento helped establish, which was the longest running Aboriginal-only medical segregation facility in Queensland. I will attempt to redress this historical oversight in this article. Firstly I will provide a brief overview of leprosy management strategies in Queensland, then outline the medical theories of Cilento, and lastly chart the establishment and operations of the Aboriginal-only leprosarium on Fantome Island.