A new exhibition on display in the College's Fellows Room at 145 Macquarie St. celebrates the resilience of Australian medical staff who were released from Japanese captivity eighty years ago this year. It also highlights some of the most poignant artefacts held in the History of Medicine Library's collections.

The book 'Tropical Medicine' was a constant companion of its owner, Lt. Col. E. M. Sheppard, (commander of an Australian Field Ambulance) throughout the Malayan Campaign and during his subsequent captivity in which he served with great distinction. It was an invaluable resource in Changi Prisoner of War camp (Singapore), at Sandakan (in a camp where only 6 of 2400 soldiers eventually survived), and at Kuching POW camp. It is worn and water stained, eaten by insects and marked by mould, as well as bearing the stamp of the Japanese command. On his release in 1945, Sheppard was evacuated on the hospital ship Wanganella where he passed the book on to Lt. Col. Wallace Freeborn who later presented it to (future Library curator) Edward Ford. Ford notes that:

"to handle this book is to bring it all back, the death and suffering of the jungle camps and the devotion of the men we knew, whose work is one of the proudest chapters of Australian medicine."

Also among the exhibits are many of Cotter Harvey's relics of Changi Prison where he was imprisoned for three years after Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942. These include many of the hand drawn Christmas cards and relics of the liberation of the camp in 1945. Other documents illustrate the so called 'Changi University' where up to 9000 soldiers and personnel were educated in various fields including medicine.

Another fascinating artefact is the bamboo cannula carved by Roy Mills while he was the sole medical officer to 718 men of the F Force working party forced to build part of the infamous Burma-Thailand Railway. Mills was in his mid-twenties at the time and had never seen cholera or other tropical diseases - he had only brief clinical experience on wards as a Resident Medical Officer at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, before he enlisted. When cholera broke out amongst the ill-fated 'F Force' he taught his orderlies how to fashion and insert the bamboo he had devised to administer saline made from salt and rainwater. He noted in his diary:

"Sad to relate, despite the utmost care, this [glass] cannula also broke so, as we were using bamboo for so many things, why not make bamboo cannula?"

The exhibition will remain on display until the end of September.