Various medical instruments from Dr Eleanor Baker McLaglan’s doctor's bag

Shared by Our Health Journeys e-museum

These medical instruments and the associated bag they were carried in belonged to Dr Eleanor Baker McLaglan; a remarkable figure in the history of General Practitioners in rural New Zealand. McLaglan was a health camp promoter, house surgeon, rural doctor, and staunch advocate for children’s health. From 1910 McLaglan was a general practitioner in Te Kōpuru, near Dargaville. The contents of her bag reveal the scope of practice that general practitioners especially but not exclusively in rural areas were expected to have. Many of the instruments had to be sterilised by boiling at the point of care, usually in the home or the doctor's surgery immediately prior to use. There was no central sterile supply department available with instruments cleansed, sterilised by heat or gamma radiation, and then packed in impermeable wrappers to be opened at the time of surgery. This doctor’s bag carried it all: each instrument required for surgery and childbirth, plus various medications, were carefully stowed within. Some of the surgery undertaken was minor, such as lancing boils or removing foreign bodies, but some was what today would be considered major, requiring hospital care such as the removal of tonsils. Even in the 1930s it was not unusual for a family doctor to perform a tonsillectomy in the home. On display at Northland Medical Museum is Dr Eleanor Baker McLaglan’s leather doctors’ bag and stethoscope, along with the bag’s contents. Read more on the Our Health Journeys e-museum website. Photographs of various medical instruments from Dr Eleanor Baker McLaglan’s doctor’s bag. Collection of Northland Medical Museum, Whangārei. Photography: Ellen Smith.