091322 140 year history - A4 landscape v1 digital - Flipbook - Page 28
1886
Dispensary
1886
Ward Day Room
In addition to their primary role of keeping patients clean and comfortable, in the early
days nurses also had to do the dusting, cleaning, sweeping, scrubbing and bed-making.
Some of their tasks were carried out in the ward day room. This was a small kitchen
located at the end of each ward where they made beef tea, arrowroot and warm drinks
for the patients as well as poultices and formentations for relieving their pain and
inflammation. Nurses were also allowed to use the room as a sitting room when they
were not engaged in active duty.
Image provided by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians History of Medicine Library
28
The first health professional appointed to the hospital
without a medical degree was a dispenser. That was in
1884, by which time there were educated and professionally
trained pharmacists in Australia whose knowledge had a
solid basis in science. The hospital’s dispensary was a large
room located in the basement of the Administration Building
and it was here that the pharmacists – called dispensers
then – would make up pills, powders and medicines by
mixing the ingredients specified in doctors’ prescriptions.
They served nurses and out-patients separately through
two windows with sliding panels.
Image from the Knox family papers, State Library of NSW