monument

Dr Koch’s fever medicine

Queensland’s climate and environment have influenced disease patterns and sparked important discoveries: Alfred Jefferis Turner and John Lockhart Gibson discovering that lead in paint caused lead poisoning in children and that hook worm entered children’s feet and caused anaemia especially in the hot, steamy sugar districts. Mosquitoes also infected Queensland people. In Cairns, Dr Edward Albert Koch who was born and qualified in medicine in Germany, was in charge of the Cairns hospital from 1882-99. He was an early convert to the idea that mosquitoes causes malaria and other diseases. His ‘fever remedy’ and preventative measures helped to control malaria in far North Queensland in the late nineteenth. The grateful community erected a memorial to him in Cairns.  In the mid-1970s it was moved from its location at the corner of Abbott and Spence Street to the nearby Anzac Memorial Park.