Person

Cilento, Lady Phyllis Dorothy (1894 - 1987)

Born
13 March 1894
Rockdale, New South Wales, Australia
Died
26 July 1987
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Occupation
Author, Educator, Journalist, Medical practitioner and Obstetrician
Alternative Names
  • Medical Mother (Pseudonym)
  • Mother M.D. (Pseudonym)

Summary

Phyllis Cilento was a medical practitioner specialising in obstetrics with a passion for educating the public. Through her books and regular columns she became a household name and a leading voice in nutrition and childcare.

Details

In 1931 Cilento established the Mothercraft Association of Queensland. She served as its president until 1946.

She also lectured in mothercraft between 1939-1946 and 1952-1962 at the University of Queensland.

Over her lifetime she published 24 books on family nutrition and childcare and wrote on the same issues in popular newspaper and magazine columns under the pseudonyms "Mother M.D."(1933-1950) and "Medical Mother" (1950 onwards).

Married to medical administrator Sir Raphael West Cilento, she ran her obstetrics clinic adjoined to their property for 36 years.

Chronology

1918
Career position - House surgeon, Adelaide Hospital
1918
Education - Graduated with M.B. B.S. From University of Adelaide
1920 - 1921
Career position - Lady Medical Officer, British Colonial Service, Teluk Intan. Location: Malaysia
1922 - 1927
Career position - Worked in private practice, Rabaul, New Guinea
c. 1928 - 1933
Career event - Mothercraft columnist for the Brisbane Daily Mail as Mother M.D.
1929
Career event - President, Queensland Medical Women's Society
1931
Career event - Founded the Mothercraft Association of Queensland
1931 - 1946
Career event - President, Mothercraft Association of Queensland
1933 - 1935
Career position - Physician to out-patients, the Hospital for Sick Children, Brisbane
1933 - 1984?
Career event - Mothercraft columnist for the Courier-Mail as Mother M.D. and then Medical Mother
1935 - 1938
Career position - Physician to inpatients, the Hospital for Sick Children, Brisbane
1939 - 1946
Career position - Specialist lecturer in mothercraft, University of Queensland
1952 - 1962
Career position - Recommenced duties as specialist lecturer in mothercraft, University of Queensland
1978
Career event - Elected a fellow of the International Academy of Preventive Medicine
1980
Career event - Elected a life member of the Australian Medical Association
1981
Award - Queenslander of the Year

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

  • McCarthy, Gavan; Morgan, Helen; Smith, Ailie; van den Bosch, Alan, Where are the Women in Australian Science?, Exhibition of the Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation, First published 2003 with lists updated regulary edn, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, 2003, https://eoas.info/exhibitions/wisa/wisa.html. Details

Books

  • Cilento, Phyllis, My Life: Lady Cilento (Sydney: Methuen Haynes, 1987), 281 pp. Details

Book Sections

Resources

See also

  • Hooker, Claire, Irresistible Forces: Australian Women in Science (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2004), 215 pp. Details

Rebecca Rigby

EOAS ID: biogs/P004911b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P004911b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260