Programme of Events

Dr Dorothy Price: the scientific approach to tackling tuberculosis in Ireland,1930-1960

Tuberculosis was arguably Ireland’s greatest public health problem in the first half of the twentieth century. This talk will focus on the work of Dr Dorothy Price, a Dublin-based paediatrician and international expert on childhood tuberculosis. Dr Price was an advocate of the use of the tuberculin test for diagnosis of tuberculosis and the use of the B.C.G. vaccine to prevent the disease. She was the first person to use the vaccine in Ireland. While the end of the tuberculosis epidemic was due to a complex series of factors, her work, which has largely been overlooked, was of significance.
Dr. Anne Mac Lellan was previously a biomedical scientist and a journalist (mainly writing under her married name of Anne Byrne) and held the position of chief medical scientist, microbiology laboratory, the Coombe Women and Infants’ University Hospital. She worked for The Irish Times for six years as a staff journalist in the education section. She was a Wellcome Trust funded doctoral student in the Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland, School of History and Archives, UCD, and is the joint winner of the 2011 History of Medicine in Ireland essay prize which is awarded bi-annually.
She has recently completed a PhD thesis entitled ‘That “preventable and curable disease”: Dr Dorothy Price and the eradication of tuberculosis in Ireland 1930-1960.

Booking essential at the Central Library. Email: [email protected] for a place.

In celebrating the Dublin City of Science, Dublin City Public Libraries are hosting a number of events under the heading of ‘Science All Around Us’, which are all free. For more info on the programme check out: www.dublincitypubliclibraries.ie