Dorothy Stopford Price: Rebel Doctor

By Anne Mac Lellan

Dorothy Stopford Price played a key role in eradicating the TB epidemic in Ireland in the twentieth century. She introduced BCG to its shores and to this day this vaccine prevents children from catching tuberculosis. This rich and beautifully written biography uncovers the importance of her medical work and of occasionally controversial measures that placed her in opposition to one of the strongest voices in Ireland at the time — the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. Prior to her trials and successes with the TB epidemic, her medical career and social standing determined a fascinating life story: born within the Protestant Ascendancy to an Anglo-Irish family and a guest of the under-secretary to the British Administration during the Easter Rising, she soon crossed a stark divide, developing an ardent republican outlook that led to her providing medical aid to a West Cork Flying Column of the IRA during the War of Independence. After the War, she channelled her energies towards eradicating TB in Ireland; at a time when the Irish medical profession looked to the Britain for leadership, she taught herself German to access scientific literature at the forefront of medical developments. Anne Mac Lellan’s biography details the provocative and indomitable life of an Irish woman frequently caught at the epicentre of Irish affairs. Dr Anne Mac Lellan is a senior medical scientist and historian. She lectures in the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and is the winner of the 2012 Royal College of Physicians of Ireland History of Medicine Research Award. In 2011 she completed a Wellcome Trust funded PhD in the Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland in University College Dublin’s School of History and Archives. A former Irish Times journalist, Anne is the co-editor of Growing Pains: Childhood Illness in Ireland 1750-1950 (Irish Academic Press, 2013).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Original Writing
• Release date: Apr 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9780716532057

Anne Mac Lellan

Anne Mac Lellan is Senior medical scientist in Connolly Hospital and part-time lecturer in NCAD. She is the co-editor of Growing Pains: Childhood Illness in Ireland 1750-1950 (2013).