LADY CILENTO

HISTORY is what it was but “revisionism” is now in favour. Monuments of Confederate General Robert E. Lee were torn down in the American south.

Now it is the memory of Lady Phyllis Cilento, a woman medical pioneer that is being attacked.

She was the first woman graduate from her university medical class in 1919 and was widely followed for her Medical Mother Column, weekly in The Courier-Mail. Opposition is because of her allegedly homophobic and racial remarks attributed to her in the context of the times.

Dr Cilento was so popular, some doctors complained the medical symptoms she wrote of, appeared in patients presenting in surgeries the day after publication.

Our State Labor Government has decided the hospital titled after her sounds politically incorrect. This decision was decided after a stacked and shonky survey was taken up. This whole business has been distressing to her sole remaining child, David aged 82.

Before Labor gathers up self-righteous skirts, they should reflect on post war federal Labor leader Arthur Caldwell, who also spoke in the context of the times, during a parliament speech in 1947. In support of the White Australia Policy, Caldwell famously stated, “Two Wongs don’t make a white.”

PETER KNOBEL, Toowoomba