As ANZAC day passes I like to make a post about ANZAC day matters. Usually it is an attempt to let a voice from the time speak.
My post for this year is a poem, it picks up some themes from other years
Letters from the front - see the Maheno letters (2020)
Poetry - see Because of thee Gallipoli (2025), Gapa Tepe (2023)
Female doctors in war - see The Angels of the Balkans (2022)
The cartoon above is somewhat unrelated but it interrupted the article in the paper so I have included it here. It is hard to promote a post if you don't have a graphic.
While we may observe that attitudes toward accepting care from female doctors may not be the issue it was when the Angels of the Balkans did there good work, or the French lampooned our soldiers for recieving care from women, there is still a significant gender gap in pay for female doctors, as can be seen from this 2025 RACGP article. There is still work to do to achieve equality.
PS - Last line courtesy of the Armidale Chronicle, together with the pen name of the poet 'Woomera'. "Woomera in the Australasian" proves to be a prodigious poet.
"GOOD LUCK TO HER."
There is an old story -- recalled, strangely enough, by a letter from the front -- about a beggar who called at a consulting-room in Collins-street, and asked whether the doctor had an old pair of trousers to spare, and of the angry attendant who said: "You know very well that it's a lady doctor practises here!"
A Victorian on service in France explains that the men from the big Buffon Hospital in Paris were chaffing the inmates of the Australian hospital about their women doctor. "Yes," said one of the patients, "we have a woman doctor, and you take it from me, mate, she's worth any two of your doctors in trousers !" Good for the doctor, and bully for the patient:
The day is gone, quite out of date,
When either fools or wowsers
Might measure science by its garb
Of petticoats or trousers.
Embroidered or tuck-pointed.
Do trousers help to lighten.
Your troubles when they've laid you out,
Or frills or fixin's frighten?
It's not the man or maid or dame
On whom you put reliance;
It's not the sex that really counts,
But just the sex's science.
If meds. are sudden, probes are scare,
And urgent is your trouble,
A hairpin may accomplish much
Where corkscrews only wobble.
If she's the surgeon, you the case,
You'll know, when once you've met her,
Her cuts are just as keen as his,
Her stitching's rather better.
When stinging bullets wing you down
Or shrapnel in its scatter,
Do bifurcated clothes console,
Or frocks or flounces matter?
Each has its compensating pointsIn zeal and skill and daring,Good luck to Dr. What's-her-name.
Whatever kind she's wearing.
Woomera in the Australasian
