IrelandGenWeb-L Archives

From: "Jean Rice" <>
Subject: [IGW] Tuberculosis in Ireland (BROWNE/GORDON)
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2002 18:23:05 -0800

Tuberculosis has been known in Ireland since early times, but it became a major scourge, especially in urban areas, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1906 it caused nearly 16% of all Irish deaths. Two sanatoriums were built in the 1890s, but attempts to make tuberculosis a notifiable disease were opposed by Irish politicians and tuberculosis remained a major killer throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The Women's National Health Association, established in 1907 by LADY ISHBEL ABERDEEN (wife of JOHN CAMPBELL GORDON, 7th earl of Aberdeen and lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1886, 1905-15) who took the lead in attempts to combat the disease. However, it was only in the late 1940s that TB became a notifiable disease in Ireland, both north and south. At the same time a Tuberculosis Authority was established in Northern Ireland, which helped reduce the number of cases substantially during the 1950s, and DR. NOEL BROWNE, the Irish health minister and social reformer, launc!
hed a campaign that within a matter of a few years had brought tuberculosis under control in the Republic as well.

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• [IGW] Tuberculosis in Ireland (BROWNE/GORDON) by "Jean Rice" <>