Favourite DIB lives: Dorothy Stopford-Price, dochtúir

Introduction by Déirdre D’Auria

Táimid ar fad ag smaoineamh ar na fir agus ar na mná atá ag obair don chóras sláinte sa tír seo in aimsir an choróinvíris, agus ag gabhadh buíochais leo siúd, idir dhochtúirí agus bhanaltraí, atá ag filleadh abhaile ó thíortha ar fud an domhain chun tabhairt faoin gcogadh seo atá romhainn.  Ba mhaith liom saol dhuine laochúil a aibhsiú, agus aitheantas a thabhairt do bhean a chuaigh rompu ar fad, bean chróga, bean chliste, bean a bhí meáite ar dhifríocht a dhéanamh do shláinte na bpáistí ach go háirithe, an bhean a thug an vacsaín BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin) atá go mór i mbéal an phobail faoi láthair i gcomhthéacs an choróinvíris, go hÉirinn – Dorothy Stopford-Price.  Ceannródaí amach is amach a bhí inti mar bhean, ag traenáil le bheith ina dochtúir in 1916 i gColáiste na Tríonóide, Baile Átha Cliath, agus ag taisteal thar lear le cur lena cuid taighde ar an eitinn, ionas nach mbeadh an chóireáil leighis don ghalar sin in Éirinn ag braith go hiomlán ar eolas a tháinig ó thíortha ina raibh Béarla mar theanga acu.  Ag éisteacht leis an nuacht sa lá atá inniu ann, bheinn cinnte de go mbeidh sí sáite san fheachtas chun muintir na tíre seo a choinnéail slán ón bpaindéim.    

We are all thinking about the men and women working on the front line of our health services during the coronavirus pandemic, and thanking those doctors and nurses who are returning from countries all over the world to work shoulder-to-shoulder with them in this war that still lies ahead of us. I would like to highlight a heroic life, and to recognise a woman who went before all of them, a brave woman, an intelligent woman, a woman who was determined to make a difference in the health of children in particular, the woman who brought the BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin) vaccine, that is being spoken of widely in the context of the current pandemic, to Ireland – Dorothy Stopford-Price. She was a pioneer of her time, as a woman, training as a medical doctor in Trinity College Dublin in 1916, and travelling abroad to further her research on tuberculosis, so that medical treatment for that illness in Ireland would not rely solely on knowledge from English-speaking countries. Listening to the news these days, I am sure that were she around today, she would be right in the thick of this campaign to keep the people of Ireland safe from this pandemic.

Dorothy Stopford-Price

by Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh

Price, Dorothy Stopford- (1890–1954), paediatrician, was born 9 September 1890 in Roebuck, Dublin, daughter of Jemmett Stopford, engineer, and Constance Stopford, whose father, Evory Kennedy, was master of the Rotunda Lying-In Hospital. Jemmett Stopford died from typhoid fever in 1902 and the family moved to London to live with relatives. As a foundation scholarship student at the newly established St Paul's Girls’ School in London, Stopford's interest in social work was noted. She worked with the Charitable Organisation Society in London and passed the entrance examination for Regent St. Polytechnic. However, Stopford began her medical studies in TCD in 1916. She was to get plenty of clinical experience as a student in TCD during the 1918–19 influenza epidemic. In 1921, immediately after graduating with her MB, she began working at the Kilbrittain dispensary, in west Co. Cork. Stopford's republican outlook led to her appointment as medical officer to a Cork brigade of the IRA. Furthermore, she lectured on first aid to Cumann na mBan members of the Kilbrittain branch, which was linked to the West Cork Brigade of the IRA and its flying column. Stopford resigned from Kilbrittain dispensary in 1923. In 1925 she married Liam Price, a barrister and district justice in Co. Wicklow, who published widely on the local history of his native county. They lived in Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin; the marriage was without issue.

Stopford-Price's career was spent mainly in St Ultan's Hospital for Infants and the Royal City of Dublin Hospital, Baggot St., where she made use of the radiological facilities when surveying children who were susceptible to tuberculosis. She was to make her professional reputation through her research in Germany, Austria, and Sweden into tuberculosis and BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, which prevented TB). She believed the disease was a ‘closed book’ in Ireland due to ‘the fact that doctors in Ireland did not read or visit German-speaking centres, and took everything via England’ (Price). Stopford-Price studied under Dr Wassen, who introduced BCG with great success in Sweden. She completed a postgraduate course in Bavaria in 1934, and represented St Ultan's the following year at an International Hospitals’ Congress in Rome. Moreover, her interests did not focus purely on medical research, as she was a member of the Irish Clean Milk Society. Her TCD master's thesis in medicine, ‘Primary tuberculosis of the lungs of children’ was completed in 1935, and subsequently published in the Irish Journal of Medical Science. She introduced BCG to St Ultan's in 1937. By 1946 the TB unit at St Ultan's had been extended to thirty cots, and she noted that ‘BCG is used exclusively at St Ultan's, which is the first hospital in Great Britain and Ireland to use it’ (Price). Her work was recognised by Dr Noel Browne, minister for health, when the National BCG Centre was located at St Ultan's in 1949 with Stopford-Price as its first chairman. Her 1942 book Tuberculosis in childhood was widely and favourably reviewed; a second edition was published in 1948. 

Internationally she was nominated for the World Health Organisation Leon Bernard prize for her contribution to social medicine. However, her hectic schedule, with many hospital appointments (she was consulting physician to the Royal National Hospital for Consumptives in Ireland and had as well Baggot St., St Ultan's, and Sunshine Home commitments) and the demands of her private practice, finally caught up with her. She suffered an attack of muscular rheumatism in 1939, and a stroke in the late 1940s; a second stroke killed her on 30 January 1954. Stopford-Price is remembered as a shy, driven individual who made the most of her talents.

Sources: Bandon rural district council, 1921 (NAI, DELG 6/2); Dorothy Price papers, NLI MS 15343; correspondence of the Crowley family of Kilbrittain, Co. Cork, NLI accession 4767; St Ultan's papers, Royal College of Physicians, Ireland; Price papers, TCD MSS 7534–73; Dorothy Stopford-Price, Tuberculosis in childhood (1942); eadem, ‘The need for BCG vaccination in infants’, Tubercule, xxx, no. 1 (Jan. 1949), 11–13; Liam Price (ed.), Dr Dorothy Price: an account of twenty years’ fight against tuberculosis in Ireland (Oxford; private circulation, 1957); T[homas] G[illman] M[oorhead], ‘In memoriam. Dorothy Price M.D.’, Ir. Jn. Med. Sc., Mar. 1954, 95; H. E. Counihan, ‘In memoriam for Dr Price’, Journal of the Irish Medical Association (Mar. 1954), 84, 72; British Medical Journal, 6 Mar. 1954; Lancet, 13 Mar. 1954; Ir. Times, 5 Oct. 1951; Leon Ó Broin, Protestant nationalists in revolutionary Ireland: the Stopford connection (1985); Davis Coakley, Baggot St: a short history of the Royal City of Dublin Hospital (1995); Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh, ‘Dorothy Stopford-Price and the elimination of childhood tuberculosis’, Joost Augusteijn (ed.), Ireland in the 1930s: new perspectives (1999), 67–82

Image: Dorothy Stopford at the Meath Hospital (Fair use)