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A Pioneer, A Survivor Complete List of Past Pieces

• Current Dr. Cicely Williams: Jamaica's Gift to the Field for Port Roy;:�l Earth.Q!lilke Maternal and Child Health Care 1893 -1992. •

• Port Roval Earth

By Dr. Rebecca Tortello • June 20J_l965: Martin Luther ONE DAY in 1902, landowner Rowland Williams is Ki!lQ.Jr. visits Jamaica

said to have looked at his active 9-year-old daughter • Bog Walk Tube Cicely and declared, "y ou'll never find a husband, my

dear. You had better go to when you are old • For Your Listenin.g Pleasure enough and learn to be a lady doctor." He could The Road tq_Freedom never have known how prophetic those words would • be. Cicely Williams, born at Kew Park, Darliston, • Westmoreland, grew up to become a pioneer in her Birth of Independence

chosen field of paediatrics. Dr. Williams was directly • Hurricane of 1780 responsible for initiating a worldwide campaign

against the use of unsuitable sweetened condensed • TrC!.g_edy at Kendai_Jj1_57 milk as a substitute for breastmilk and for the The Ward Theatre 1912 diagnosis of the dreaded childhood nutritional • disease, kwashiorkor. • The Guarded City: Port Royal In January 1976, Dr. Cicely 1690 Williams was honoured with the

HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER Insignia of Order of Merit by • The Triumph of Will: 1960s It wasn't until the outbreak of World War I in 1914 Governor-General the Rt. Hon. Sir Florizel Glasspole. when she started to take First Aid and nursing • T�History of Ou�rishes classes that Cicely thought seriously about studying medicine. In 1916, her Jamaica and the Great War father died and she decided to follow his advice and go to Oxford, her father's • alma mater. She was one of few females admitted due to the scarcity of male students caused by World War I.

• Celebrating Christmas Jamaica 'Style' After graduating in 1923 Cicely worked extra-long hours at the South London

Hospital for Women and Children in one of the first child welfare clinics. She • Disaster - The Eart!J.guake_of chose to specialize in paediatrics and her conviction that cultivating knowledge 190'?.

about her patients' personal backgrounds was crucial to successful diagnoses • The Great Exhibition of 1891 and treatments would come to define her medical practice. • The Muti!J.Y_On Tl:l_e_Bount;y& The Arrival of The First Breadfr:_uit THE YOUNG DOCTOR IN AFRICA 1793 A tall, slender, energetic young woman, • The Fall Of A Gentle GiantJhe with a tireless commitment to healing, Col@Qse of Tom Cringle's Cotton , Cicely at heart desired an overseas posting Tree and applied to the colonial office. After � • Jamaica's Botanical Gardens wailjng_ 2 ¥�¥�·� �as sent to the Gold AAi��El��now known as ) in All Hail The State Visit Of ·��1\0N.A\. UB .

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1929. Dr. Williams spent 7 years there, • EmEror Haile Selassie I learning to speak Twi and working to improve health conditions. When she • Jamaican Healer And War ,.,.o._AJ-I!illl arrived one room served as a waiting, Heroine Mar:y_Seacole consulting, examination, sterilization and • Mistresses Of The Sea: Female dispensing room. She established proper Pirates Mary Read and Anne clinics and hospitals and was also Bonny �'���' responsible for issuing patient information • The CQQ_ital Cit�: A Historic Look cards to improve record keeping. Cicely At Kingston also started well-baby clinics that stressed • Riots Here: Send Hel12 At Once nutrition run by nurses she trained to do • A Historic Portrait of the Town outreach on maternal and child-care. As a Where Jamaica's Tourism B�n �Q�� result of the success of these well-baby • '-\>.:�-� clinics attendance at her hospital fell Devon House -The first 500 years in_ Jamaica dramatically. • Jamaican Coffee - A bever�of distinction Dr. Williams' most important work in Africa • was her diagnosis of the common and often Jamaican Rum - A kill-devil of a drink fatal kwashiorkor, a disease too long misdiagnosed as pellagra (a vitamin • Jamaica Festival - What a Bam Bam Dr. Williams holds an infant during tests deficiency disease caused by a lack of carried out in August 1952, on cause of niacin). Soon after her arrival in Africa she • CaQtivated by_ Jamaica - Sir Hans vomiting sickness. began to keep track of children who came Sloane's Passion for Jamaica to see her with swollen bellies and legs, and whose skin were sometimes of a • �tivated by Jamaica Pt II - lighter colour than that of their parents. After receiving the equipment needed Noel CowardL Errol Flynn and Ian to carry out post-mortems, she still needed to get permission from mothers to Fleming perform post-mortems on their children an act which was believed to be • The Fou_nding Of The BITU & The JLP against their religious beliefs. Cicely carried out a few at great personal risk • while conducting post-mortems, because in the 1930s, there, she had no The Founding Of Ute People's Nation.M_Party antibiotics. Dr. Williams wound up becoming infected with the disease known • as haemolytic streptococcus from doing a post-mortem with a small cut on her Lewis Hutchinson: The Mad Master

hand. It nearly cost her her life. Never one to look on the negative side, during • A Pioneer, A Survivor: Dr. Cice!y her recovery a friend visited her only to find her writing a paper on kwashiorkor Williams noting findings such as the fact that most children were found to have a fatty • Henry Morgan: The Pirate Kio.g liver. Once back at work, Cicely began to question the women more about what they feed their children. Frustrated at her inability to solve the puzzle this • Claude McK�: Jamaica's First Poet Laureate disease had become and unwilling to watch more children die from it she asked an African nurse if it had a name. She learned it was called • Frazier versus Foreman on the Sunshjpe lsland_j973 "kwashiorkor" meaning the sickness the older child gets when the next baby is born. Cicely surmised that this meant that weanling children were not receiving • The Ma_gical Spiderman: Anancy enough to eat. The cure for kwashiorkor was a simple one education on • The Case Of The Shark Papers children's nutritional needs. She quickly published her diagnosis in one of many articles on maternal and child care in third world countries she would • Katherine Dunham - Matriarch of publish during the course of her lifetime. Modern Dance • Money -The Roots of Jamaican Currency Dr. Williams was always eager to learn new medical techniques. When • confronted with diseases she couldn't cure she was not averse to referring her Simon Bolivar: El Liberatador

patients to African herbal doctors. She became close to one such African • Old Time Tellin's: A Closer Look At doctor who over the course of a few years healed patients suffering from Jamaican Proverbs

tetanus and meningitis diseases for which Europeans had no cures. • Recollections of World War II Eventually he shared his methods with Cicely and she took copious notes, hoping to engage European pharmaceutical companies in the manufacture of • Place Names -A Window to Jamaica's HistotlCharacter : these cures. Sadly Dr. Williams' notes were lost in the country of her next Wnat's In A Name? colonial office post, Malaya, during the occupation of Singapore in 1941. • The History Of Spj!nlshTown

• A Cultur@i Explication Of Empire: IN MALAYA Lady_ Nygent's Journal In the late 1930s, Dr. Williams arrived in this Asian country, now part of • The History Of Falmouth: Boom Malaysia, to lecture at the University of Singapore. She began to pay attention Town Of The 19th Century to milk and what types of milk were used to feed children. She discovered that N >\TIO NALUBRARY-OF JAMAICA

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milk firms were encouraging women to use sweetened condensed milk instead • Dreamers Among_!Ls - Famous of breast milk by saying it was healthier for their babies when in fact the Jamaican Scientists- Prof. Louis Grant 1913 - 1993 PartI opposite was true. She immediately began her campaign against the milk firms by speaking in public, publishing her famous treatise provocatively titled "M ilk • DreamersAmong_ Us - Famous Jamaican Scientists-PartII and Murder," and increasing her outreach activities amongst local women. • Out Of Many Cultures: The People Who Came -The Jews In Jamaica

WORLD WAR II PRISONER • Out Of Many Culturts: The People In 1941 Cicely was settling into a regular routine in the Malayan state of Who Came -The Chinese Trengganu, responsible with 23 other doctors for some 300,000 people. On • Out Of Many Cultures: The People December 8, the Japanese invaded and Cicely's normal routine was shattered. Who Came - The Lebanese Although she hated to leave her patients, as a European citizen she was • Out Of Many Cultures: The Peome ordered to undertake the treacherous journey by river and over mountains to Who Came -The Indians the still safe Singapore. Soon, Singapore too fell to the Japanese and Cicely • Out Of Many Cultures: The People was interred. She came down with a terrible case of dysentery (an Who Came -The Irish inflammation of the lining of the large intestines) and nearly died. Not too long • Out Of Many Cultures: The PeoR!_e after she recovered she was moved to another prison, Changi. The nights Who Came - The Africans were filled with the sound of screaming prisoners living through their worst • Out Of Ma_ny Cultures: The People nightmares. After two years of near starvation at Changi, Cicely was taken to Who Came -The Germans the headquarters of the Kempe Tai, the equivalent of the Nazi Gestapo. She • Colourful Characters -Jamaican was tortured, starved, questioned to exhaustion and placed in a series of Birds cages she was forced to share with dying men for over 4 months. Cicely • The Sta� Of HlstoJY: The survived 11 days and was released and returned to Changi. VE day in 1945, Jamaican Postal Servic! (the day of the allied victory over Nazi Germany) found Cicely in the hospital • The PeQPie Who Came - The near death. Old Malayan friends collected her and nursed her back to health. English

Not long after she was part of a guard of honour, all women who had been • Old-time Jamaican weddings imprisoned by the Japanese, who witnessed the surrender of six Japanese • In this_piace dwelt Horatio generals to British war hero Lord Mountbatten. She then returned to England. Nelson

• Printing in Jamaica IN HER GOLDEN YEARS • As soon as she regained her health, Dr. Williams returned to Malaya and Museums in Jamaica

became the first woman to be put in charge of all maternity and child welfare • Gibraltar Cam�: A Refuqe From services. She was 52 years old. She stayed for 3 years and returned to WM.

England to lecture at Oxford. From 1948-51 she worked as adviser to the • HISTORY OF AVIATION IN World Health Organization (WHO), the first in maternal and child health. In the JAMAICA: PART I

early 1950s she worked for a while in her native Jamaica leaving to become • HISTORY OF AVIATION IN "Senior Lecturer in Nutrition at London University (1953-5). In 1960 Dr. Williams JAMAICA: PART II

went to Beirut as a professor of Maternal and Child Health at the American • Roads & RESISTANCE University and stayed there for 4 years. At 70 years old, in 1964, she became

an adviser in the training programme of the Family Planning Association, a • KINGSTON'S HISTORIC AND position she retained for 3 years. In her nineties Dr. Williams remained an DIVERSE PLACES OF WORSHIP RELIGIOUS ICONS �art 1 active speaker, giving talks in countries such as Nepal, Pakistan and Israel. • KINGSTON'S HISTORIC AND DIVERSE PLACES OF WORSHIP During her life, as doctor, researcher, lecturer and WHO adviser, Dr. Williams RELIGIOUS ICONS_m�rt 2 worked in 58 countries and her methods of maternal and child care were • The history of the Salvation Arrny_in practised uniformly around the world. She is one of many outstanding Jamaica CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS Jamaicans and one of many outstanding Jamaican women, who deserve • Somewhere be)'Qnd the sea recognition for her contributions on the world's stage. Dr. Cicely Williams died • A fascination with football in England in 1992 at the age of 98. • Jamaican Horse racinR HistQIY

NOTES: • A Time to Live... Jamaican Birth Rituals

• * In 1977 a worldwide boycott of sweetened condensed milk as infant food A Time to Die Death rituals began. Despite the fact that formula is not equivalent to breastmilk, scarce • resources continue to be used to buy it while free, healthier breastmilk is left to Deadly superstitions dry up.

*The papers of Dr. Cicely Williams were given to England's Contemporary Feedback To the Series

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Medical Archives Centre in 1993, and subsequently catalogued. They cover "I have found your articles on most aspects of her work from 1929-1989 in the field of maternal and child the Pieces of the Past most health, as practitioner, teacher and consultant in the developing world. The entertaining and interesting to collection includes correspondence, reports, lectures, publications, read. For me as a historian photographs and sound recordings, and is of relevance to a wide range of these pieces come at a time issues related to maternal and child health and the development of appropriate when Jamaicans need to local health care systems. In particular, it is of interest in relation to Williams' reconnect themselves with pioneering work on the identification of the childhood malnutrition disease their past and the Gleaner's kwashiorkor. efforts through this medium is quite commendable. * Dr. Williams shared her desire to serve others with her brother, R.A. Williams, a distinguished Jamaican agriculturalist, beloved by farmers I have found especially today's islandwide. Some say there is no one that did more for the banana and article on the 1780 hurricane to livestock industries than he. be quite of interest to me as I am currently involved in Sources: Dally, A. (1968). Cicely: the Story of a Doctor. London: Victor bringing to light the role of Gol/ancz Ltd. Hunter, I. The papers ofCicely Williams (1893-1992) in the natural disasters in the contemporary medical archives centre at the Wei/come Institute, London: development of Jamaica's Contemporary Medical ArchivesCentre, the Wei/come Institute for the History history, culture, society, of Medicine. economy and politics and the http:I!Www3.oup.co.uk/sochislhdbNolume_09/Issue_011090109.sgm.abs.html, article on the "H urricane of www3.oup.co.uk/sochislhdbNolume_091 lssue_011090109.sgm.abs.html, 1780" has greatly aided in this www. babymilkaction. orglpageslhistory.html, direction. Keep up the good http://Www.westonaprice . orglchildrenltricks.html, work and I look forward to Williams, R.F. (1972). R. F. Looks Back, Canterbury: R. F. Williams. more interesting and historically significant pieces from this series." - Kerry-Ann

The First 500 years in Jamaica

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