Laura Forster is remembered in medicine for work that altered practice rather than merely argument.
The record lists Laura Forster as Australian nurse, physician and surgeon.
Laura Forster was born at Ryde in 1858. Her recorded nationality is Australia.
Anaesthesia, antisepsis and germ theory arrived within fifty years and made modern surgery possible for the first time.
Most medical progress is invisible: it shows up as an illness that no longer kills anyone.
That the work was done from Australia matters: hospitals, training and research funding are unevenly distributed, and they decide which questions can be asked.
Laura Forster died in 1917, aged 59. What survives is the change in practice, which is how a medical life is actually measured.
