New Publication: Dorothy Stopford Price. Rebel Doctor

This month saw the publication of a new biography of DorothyStopford Price, one of the leading figures in the fight to eradicate TB in Ireland she introduced BCG vaccinations to Ireland.   The biography is written by Dr Anne Mac Lellan, who completed her PhD in 2011 at the Center for the History of Medicine in Ireland, UCD and in 2012 won the RCPI History of Medicine Research Award.

Mac Lellan’s biography covers Price’s life from her birth into the Protestant Ascendancy, through the development of her ardent republican outlook which led to her appointment as medical office to a West Cork Flying Column of the IRA during the War of Independence.

In 1921 Dorothy Stopford Price started on the work which would lead to the eradication of TB in Ireland. At a time when the medical profession in Ireland looked to the UK for guidance, Price taught herself German so she could access the latest scientific knowledge coming out of Germany, where many of the leaders in the field were researching.  Price’s work also placed her in opposition to one of the strongest powers in Ireland at that time – the Catholic Church, and especially the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid.

Published by Irish Academic Press, Mac Lellan’s biography tells the story of the ‘provocative and indomitable life of an Irish women frequently caught at the epicenter of Irish affairs’.

A copy of the biography is available for researchers to consult in RCPI’s Heritage Centre and is, as they say, available in all good bookshops.