Scientific Welsh Eye Surgeon: The short life of Llewellyn Powell MD, Christchurch’s first Public Health Medical Officer

Dr Llewellyn Powell (1843-79) is one of Christchurch’s unsung medical heroes, and one of its earliest scientific educators. He was a quiet modest young man who died at 36, from tuberculosis, and was forgotten. Yet as the city’s first Medical Officer of Health he deserves to be remembered for urging the construction of New Zealand’s first system of underground sewers. This was based on scientific research: he completed the first analysis of causes of death in Christchurch. His campaign to persuade the city council to ban cesspits and introduce a pan and night-cart system soon brought a drastic reduction in the city’s appalling death rates from diphtheria and typhoid in the 1870s, even before the sewers were completed. As well as being a livewire in the Acclimatisation Society, the Mechanics’ Institute and the Philosophical Institute, he gave the first public lectures in Christchurch on biology and chemistry, and was the first lecturer in these subjects for Canterbury College, which later became the University of Canterbury. This biography, based on exhaustive research at the University of Canterbury, brings Dr Powell’s short and tragice career to life again in vivid detail.

Format: Paperback
Imprint: Small New Zealand Publisher