This is Doctor Dorothy Stopford Price. She was a female doctor at a time in Ireland when it was frowned upon for a woman to be involved in the professions. She witnessed the 1916 Rising, two world wars, Spanish Flu and the fight for Irish independence first-hand. She was treated the IRA/IRB members engaged in the war of independence.
But that’s all beside the point. Her greatest contribution to Ireland was her fight to introduce the BCG vaccine, and she was was a forerunner in the introduction of tuberculin testing to this country. This was the 1930s and 1940s, a time when tuberculosis was still an epidemic in this country and especially in the cities where there was massive levels of poverty. As a Protestant, her attempts to introduce these things were met with opposition from the Catholic church, but in the end she proved successful. (Noel Brown’s Mother and Child Scheme was not so successful.)
Yet, in spite of being so heavily involved in the attempts to eradicate human tb, Doctor Dorothy Stopford Price has been forgotten. We don’t learn about her in school, instead being taught what a failure the aforementioned Mother and Child Scheme was. Let’s focus on the positives for once! Human tuberculosis in Ireland is at an all-time low, and it there were only six cases of bovine tuberculosis diagnosed in humans in this country in 2013. (Source) TB in all of its forms has gone from an epidemic to something almost negligible. And quite a lot of that is thanks to vaccination and this woman.
Doctor Dorothy Stopford Price, everyone.
