Lucille Teasdale-Corti

Lucille Teasdale-Corti
Born (1929-01-30)January 30, 1929
Montreal, Canada
Died August 1, 1996(1996-08-01) (aged 67)
Besana in Brianza, Italy
Nationality Canadian by birth, acquired Italian citizenship upon marriage
Other names Lucille Teasdale
Occupation Medical doctor and pediatric surgeon
Known for Pediatric surgeon who dedicated her professional career to working in Lacor Hospital (Northern Uganda) with her husband
Awards

1982 Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (Gov. of Italy) 1987 Frederick Newton Gisborne Starr Award (Canadian Medical Association) 1991 Order of Canada (Gov. of Canada) 1995 National Order of Quebec (Gov. of the Prov. of Quebec) 1995 Honorary Fellow (The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada) 1995 Antonio Feltrinelli Prize (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei Rome) 1996 Doctorate Honoris Causa (University of Montreal) 2000 A commemorative stamp is issued within the Millennium Collection (Canada Post)

2004 In memoriam Gold Medal Order of Civil Merit (Gov. of Italy)

Lucille Teasdale-Corti, CM GOQ (January 30, 1929 – August 1, 1996) was a Canadian physician and pediatric surgeon, who worked in Uganda from 1961 until her death in 1996. She contributed to the development of medical services in the north of the country.

Early life in Canada

Born in Montreal, Quebec on 30 January 1929, Lucille Teasdale was the fourth of seven children. Her father René ran a grocery store in Avenue Guybourg, Saint-Léonard, in Montreal’s eastern area.

She was educated as a boarder at a Catholic school belonging to one of the first congregations of nuns established in Canada and dedicated to education. Upon hearing testimony from some nuns who had worked as missionaries in China, she decided, at 12 years of age, to become a doctor “in the Indies.”

She enrolled at the University of Montreal’s Faculty of Medicine in 1950. In her class of 110 students only ten women were enrolled. Eight of these female students continued their studies past the first year. She graduated Cum Laude in 1955 and carried out her internship in Montreal’s Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Sainte-Justine, a pediatric and obstetric university health centre affiliated with the University of Montreal.

During this internship she met Italian doctor, Piero Corti, who carried out two residencies (1955/56 and 1957/58) at Sainte Justine Hospital during his postgraduate training in Pediatrics at Pavia University (Italy). He already had postgraduate specializations in Radiology (1953) and Neuropsychiatry (1956), both at University of Milano (Italy). Both doctors shared the desire to work where the need was greatest but, as Corti stated, “she was always much too busy for anything else but work.”

After her internship Lucille Teasdale enrolled in Postgraduate School for Pediatric Surgery in 1958. She carried out her first two years at Hopital Maisonneuve and Hopital Hotel-Dieu, both in Montreal. Wanting an opportunity to complete her final period of residency abroad, she applied to several hospitals in the USA but was turned down; some specifically mentioned her being a woman as a contraindication.

In 1960 Lucille traveled to France to carry out her final internship year at the Hôpital de la Conception in Marseille.

France and Uganda

In September 1960 Lucille traveled to France to work at l'Hôpital de la Conception in Marseille, and, although she lacked confidence in her own abilities she was nonetheless highly regarded by staff members there.[1] She had been unhappy with the Canadian health-care system which, to her, appeared to be an immoral one because it had both private and public sectors, and patients in the private sector obtained better treatment. She thought indeed that medicine was so interesting that doctors should pay for the honor of practicing it.[2]

It was while working in Marseilles that Corti approached her: he needed a surgeon at a small clinic which had been established in Uganda and to which he had recently been invited and had hopes of turning into a hospital. The clinic was located in a small village of the Acoli tribe, 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) from Gulu (2°46′34″N 32°15′07″E / 2.776154°N 32.252026°E / 2.776154; 32.252026) It was run by a staff of six Combonian nuns and consisted of an outpatient unit and around 40 maternity beds.[3] She agreed to go with Corti, initially for a period of two months, and arrived in May 1961.[4] On 10 June 1961 she performed her first operation,[5] on a makeshift table, and thereafter spent mornings treating outpatients and afternoons in theater.[4]

Facilities improved as Corti spent his time soliciting donations from abroad. The clinic was renamed Lacor Hospital, after the nearby town, and Teasdale returned to France after extending her stay from two months to four.[4]

She returned in December 1961, finding herself unable to be separated from Corti. They were married in the hospital chapel on 5 December and on 17 November 1962 she gave birth to their daughter Dominique.[6] At this time Teasdale was seeing around 300 outpatients each morning and then performing operations in the afternoon, in conditions which were poor due to, amongst other things, a fluctuating supply of electricity, shortage of suitable medication and the poor quality of the water supplied.[4]

She also spent time educating Acoli mothers who were uninformed about medical science and were utilising the traditional practice of ebino, the extraction of infants' canine tooth buds, which supposedly cures disease, but in fact often causes bacterial infections.[7][8]

Uganda, a British protectorate, gained independence on 9 October 1962. Years of civil unrest and then outright civil war followed, involving the supporters of the dictators Amin Dada (1971–1978), Milton Obote (1979–1985) and the Lord’s Resistance Army (1986–2006), as well as an invasion by Tanzanian troops.[3] By the end of Amin's period in power there had been an estimated 300,000 victims.[4] The hospital received its share of the wounded and the dying, causing Teasdale-Corti to become a war surgeon and increasing her workload further.[9] The hospital not merely dealt with the casualties but also suffered from looting and the kidnap of staff members.[4] During this time Teasdale continued to expand her abilities and expertise and, in 1979, performed her first bone graft, this being on a wounded soldier in an attempt to avoid the alternative of amputation,.[10]

Lucille in the theater

In 1972 she and her husband established a school of nursing at the hospital to train local people; from 1982 she ran a program at Makerere University, Kampala for the training of surgical residents and also arranged the work preparation of Italian doctors intending to work in Africa.[11]

She was a mentor, champion and a great friend to Matthew Lukwiya, another distinguished doctor at the same hospital, who later died of ebola there.[12]

Illness

Teasdale-Corti had prided herself on her stamina, working extremely long hours in difficult circumstances.[4] When her health began to deteriorate and her ability to sustain a heavy workload was consequently reduced, she sought medical advice for herself. The diagnosis, which is variously said to have been made in Italy[4] and by Anthony Pinching (an immunologist) in London,[13] was that she was suffering from AIDS, probably as a consequence of operating on a victim of the civil war.

She suffered the consequences of the illness for a further eleven years,[4] with trips to San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in order to receive treatment for herself. She died on 1 August 1996, weighing 33 kg,[14] in Besana in Brianza, Italy, to which she had recently moved in search of treatment for herself.[15] A copy of what is believed to be her last letter exists and describes the situation of both the hospital and herself at the time.[16] Her body was returned to Uganda and interred in the grounds of the hospital.[17] A few months after her death Corti had his fourth heart attack;[3] and he eventually died seven years later, of pancreatic cancer. He had continued working at the hospital, had conducted research into AIDS with Dr J W Carswell,[18] and was buried next to his wife.[17]

In 1993, three years before her death she and her husband had established the Lucille Teasdale and Piero Corti Foundation in Montreal, followed two years later by a similar body based in Milan.[4][19] These were intended to ensure the continued existence of the hospital.[20][21] By that time she had performed more than 13,000 operations and the hospital had grown to have 465 beds and departments covering numerous specialities.[4] As at 2011 Dominique, the couple's daughter and herself a doctor of medicine, continues to run the Foundations.[4][19]

A TV movie of the story was made in 2000.[22]

Honours and recognition

References

  1. ↑ Arseneault p. 59
  2. ↑ Arseneault p. 62
  3. 1 2 3 "Who are we". Fondation Teasdale-Corti pour l'hôpital Lacor. Retrieved 2011-02-17.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 "Famous Canadian Physicians: Dr Lucille Teasdale". Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved 2011-02-16.
  5. ↑ Arseneault p. 72
  6. ↑ Arseneault p. 131
  7. ↑ Arseneault p. 122
  8. ↑ Iriso, R.; Accorsi, S.; Akena, S.; Amone, J. (2000). Fabiani, M., Ferrarese, N., Lukwiya, M., Rosolen, T. and Declich, S.. ""Killer" canines: the morbidity and mortality of ebino in northern Uganda". Tropical Medicine & International Health 5: 706–710. doi:10.1046/j.1365-3156.2000.00625.x. PMID 11044265.
  9. ↑ Arseneault p. 179
  10. ↑ Arseneault p. 213
  11. 1 2 3 4 "Dr Lucille Teasdale-Corti". The Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. Retrieved 2011-02-17.
  12. ↑ Blaine Harden (February 18, 2001). "Dr. Matthew's Passion-". New York Times.
  13. ↑ Arseneault p. 226
  14. ↑ Arseneault p. 323
  15. ↑ Arseneault p. 327
  16. ↑ "Full transcript of the last letter from an ill and tired Lucille Teasdale, unofficial translation". Library & Archives Canada. Retrieved 2011-02-17.
  17. 1 2 "Piero Corti and Lucille Teasdale". Lacor Hospital. Retrieved 2011-02-17.
  18. ↑ Arseneault p. 229
  19. 1 2 "Who are we". Fondation Teasdale-Corti pour l'hôpital Lacor. Retrieved 2011-02-17.
  20. ↑ "Fondazione onlus Piero e Lucille Corti per Lacor Hospital (in Italian/English)". Fondazione onlus Piero e Lucille Corti. Retrieved 2011-02-17.
  21. ↑ "Fondation Teasdale-Corti pour l'hôpital Lacor (in French/English)". Fondation Teasdale-Corti pour l'hôpital Lacor. Retrieved 2011-02-17.
  22. ↑
  23. ↑ "The Sasakawa Health Prize". World Health Organization.
  24. 1 2 "AIDS claims medical pioneer, humanitarian". Canadian Medical Association Journal 155 (6): 741. 1996-09-15. PMC 1335237. PMID 8925492.
  25. ↑ Canadian Medical Association Journal (Canadian Medical Association) 162 (9). 2000-05-02 http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/162/9/1337-a. Retrieved 2011-02-17. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  26. ↑ "Seven new inductees named to Canadian Medical Hall of Fame". Canadian Medical Association Journal 164 (8). 2001-04-17. Retrieved 2011-02-17.
  27. ↑ "CSSS Lucille Teasdale". Government of Quebec. Retrieved 2011-02-17.
  28. ↑ "RCPSC Teasdale-Corti Humanitarian Award". RCPSC. Retrieved 2011-02-17.

Bibliography

External links

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