The Medical Department
had an early origin. Before the arrival of Captain Lonsdale in 1836, there were no Government invalids to be cared for, and even after, the prisoners committed for trial for indictable offences were, until 1839, forwarded to Sydney, as there was no "trying" machinery in Melbourne. The few cases of illness that occurred up to September, 1837, were attended to by our two first physicians, Drs. A. Thomson and B. Cotter; but on the 14th September Dr. Patrick Cussen arrived from Sydney, with the appointment of Assistant Colonial Surgeon, and forthwith entered upon his duties, which, in the course of a few years, became onerous and troublesome to a degree, for he had to attend to the convict employes attached to the several departments ; and not the least troublesome, his services were at the call of the Immigrants staying in the depot or camp prior to their engagement. He was the Public Vaccinator, as small-pox panics occasionally occurred, in consequence of the epidemic showing now and then amongst the Aborigines. Cussen was a white-headed, red-faced, brown coated, good-humoured, though choleric little fellow, and between the Immigration tents, the Government Hospital, the gaol, and the newspapers, was kept in a chronic state of tribulation. In the early times the wattle and-daub hut, used as a prisoners' lock-up, had to do duty also as hospital—a queer place one would think in which to promote convalescence; but then the patients were numerically so small, that there were never more than one or two beds, or rather shakesdown, required at a time, and often none at all. As to a lock-up, it might be one literally, for the prisoners were locked in there, but the white culprits had little difficulty in breaking out, and the blackfellows incarcerated used to burrow under the slabs forming the foundation. The first institution of this kind was on "the Government block" before mentioned, off the north-west corner of King and Little Collins Streets, and respecting it Mr. Robert Russell thus answered a query of mine: "The building marked ' Temporary Hospital' in the plan was, I believe, used as a lock-up or watch-house, because the same building in m y field-book when I surveyed this block is marked 'temporary gaol,' and I know not where else it could have been. It seems to have been doomed to do double or treble duty. I know it was from this building, or one of those adjoining, that the blackfellow scraped his way out, and I also know that it was used as an hospital when Dr. Cussen was the Government doctor; for he sent a sketch which I made of it to Sydney, to show what a hovel it was." Some time after a stone lock-up was erected in the Market Reserve, and a wooden police office, with a couple of skillions put up near it. The Hospital must have followed in their wake, for, in 1839, the P. P. Gazette declared it to be "a close, dirty box, about 12 feet square, the adjoining apartment being turned into a waiting and lounging room to the police office!" It was subsequently transferred to a stone cottage in the north-western part of Bourke Street, flanked by an aromatic bye-way known as Shamrock Alley, and as an Immigration Infirmary, found its last abode, singularly too, in the vacated offices of the Superintendent at Batman's Hill. After the convict element ceased to be employed in the town, and the Russell Street prison was opened, the Government Hospital was mostly used by the newly-arrived immigrants, who, as a rule, were robust and healthy, so that for several years the Government Sanatorium was little more than a mythical institution, about which Old Cussen used to fume and fuss, together with a sort of double, named Leary, as his care-taker and shadow; and I really believe that the pair, misled by the power of imagination, sometimes really fancied they had a whole ward full of shadowy invalids to minister to. In 1840 the department stood on the following moderate footing:— Assistant Surgeon at Melbourne, P. Cussen, Esq., M.D.), £136 17s. 6d. per annum; Assistant Surgeon at Geelong, Jonathan Clarke, Esq., M.D., £50 per annum; Dispenser, 8d. a day, £12 3s. 4d. per annum; allowance for quarters to the Assistant Surgeon at Melbourne, £50 5s. per annum; provisions and medical comforts, £120 per annum; utensils and hospital furniture, £100 per annum; incidental expenses, £10 per annum.
One day in 1845, Dr. Cussen was nearly killed in my presence under the following circumstances:— Professional duties led me to the new gaol, now the old southern wing of the metropolitan prison, and on admittance I found Cussen and the gaoler (Wrintle) in conversation. There was then no Yarra Bend or any other Lunatic Asylum, and the gaol had to serve the purpose of what is now termed an Hospital for the Insane of both sexes. There was a dangerously demented woman confined in one of the cells on the ground floor, and on the invitation of the doctor we accompanied him to see how the poor creature
