Jamaica's history - always something new to find out!
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        • James H Blackwood >
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    • remarkable families >
      • family of C E Moody >
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      • family of R M Nicholas
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        • Rosalind
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    • in the churches >
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        • 1692 and beyond
      • Rev. S. J. Washington
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      • Rev. J. J. Fuller
      • Church of England >
        • Rev. Francis Humberstone
        • Rev. J. M. Trew
        • Edward Maunde Thompson
        • Rev. R. Gordon
        • Rev Dr Hugh Croskery
        • Rev. T. Banbury
        • Rev. R. O. Taylor
        • Rev. H. L. Phillips >
          • as an Episcopalian priest
        • Rev. C. C. Douce
        • Rev. A. Cole
        • A. L. "Teacher" Walcott
        • Rev. and Mrs W. A. Burris
        • Rev. W. L. Brown
      • the Moravians >
        • Rev. W. V. Moses
    • in education >
      • brief lives >
        • Thomas Terence Sherlock
      • Francis Williams
      • ~ Woodlawn 1896
      • Matthew Josephs
      • T. B. Stephenson
      • Robert Lindsay
      • W Thomas Linton
      • S. C. Thompson
      • W. H. Plant
      • Sigismund C. Walker
      • Thomas I. Brown
      • E. Luther Brookes
    • in legal professions >
      • Peter Moncrieffe
      • J. T. Palache
      • A. A. Fleming
      • H. R. Walters
      • H. A. Joseph
      • M. H. Spencer Joseph
      • J. L. King
    • in medical professions >
      • - doctors >
        • Sampson Altman
        • J. J. Edwards
        • A. J. Thomas
        • R. M. Stimpson
        • E. C. Kinkead
        • E. V. Smith
        • T. A. Dryden
        • Cicely Williams
        • Roderick Atkinson
        • - in the U.S.A. >
          • Simeon I. Battiste
          • David Newton Emanuel Campbell >
            • portable window fire-escape ladder
          • A. E. Forsyth
      • - dentists >
        • Pedro Pompey
        • A. T. Cooper
        • E. E. Clark
        • J. H. Nicholson
      • - dispensers >
        • Anthan F Berry
        • Charles E Moody
      • - nurses
      • - psychiatrists
    • in politics & public affairs >
      • early Black politicians [slideshow]
      • Edward Jordon
      • Jim Russell >
        • the 'Great War'
      • Colonel George Hicks
      • Samuel Page Smeeton
    • in business >
      • drogher/droguer women
      • Edward Vickars
      • Charles Phillip Lazarus >
        • Charles Philip Lazarus remembered
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          • - 'City of Kingston'
          • - Jamaica Cycle Company
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          • 1909 Party of Progress
      • J. H. & J. O. Milke
      • beekeepers >
        • Hill/Darwin correspondence
      • Robert Mitchell Nicholas
      • Joseph Milward Gordon >
        • Gall's News Letter 1890
      • John Cassis
      • Jacob Hume Stewart
      • Christopher L Barnes
      • Ernest Clarke
      • Lance E. Drysdale
    • on the land >
      • John S. Levy
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      • athletics >
        • Alfred Reynolds Downer >
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            • - amateur
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          • . . . but after that
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        • J. K. Holt, snr
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      • Gleaner references
      • 1796 Richard Brinsley Sheridan
      • 1802 Maria, Lady Nugent
      • 1836 Popular Encyclopedia
      • 1844 Edwin Tregellies
      • 1844 Philip Henry Gosse
      • 1859 Richard Hill
      • 1860 Atlantic Monthly
      • 1862 Edward Cust
      • 1865 Col. Fyfe
      • 1865 Once a Week
      • 1866 Charles Town Maroons
      • 1867 Trip to the Tropics
      • 1890 Historical Geography
      • 1898 New York Tribune
      • 1898 Edith, Lady Blake
      • my articles: >
        • 1996 'Trouble with the Maroons'
        • 2001 'A brave and loyal people'
    • . . . some more Jamaicans
    • and even more
  • places
    • Kingston & St Andrew >
      • various places >
        • Knutsford Pen
      • street corner cannons
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        • 19th century
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          • P A Espeut interview
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        • a trip to 'Wareka' 1896
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          • the Treasury clock
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        • - 'Victoria Quarterly'
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        • Prof. W. A. Barclay
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      • the classical musicians >
        • - Eleanor Alberga
        • ~ Neville Atkinson
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        • - Richard Beckford
        • - Harold St Nicholas Cartier
        • - Frederic H. Cowen
        • - Noel DaCosta
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        • - Oswald Russell
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    • & everything else >
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          • 1913 legislation
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        • Port Royal 1667
        • Great Earthquake 1692
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        • 1888 - 50 years
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            • - Creole Airs
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    • exhibitions >
      • 1891 >
        • the phonograph
        • merry-go-rounds
        • Amphitrite
      • 1932 >
        • the Exhibition starts >
          • a walk around the Exhibition
        • Exhibition extended
        • Exhibition sports
        • - D T Wint
        • - 'Exhibition' Beecher
        • - W A W Mitchell
        • - L. A. Thoywell-Henry
      • 1934
      • 1946 - Exhibition that wasn't
    • natural disasters >
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        • - 1692
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          • Kingston burning
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            • - Capt. T. T. Lovelace
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          • who was Joseph E Thomas?
          • afterwards
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        • Jamaica's climate
        • Dampier and hurricanes
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          • 1780s - hurricane decade
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          • - 1815
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        • 1843 >
          • 1843 Colonial Magazine
        • 1862
        • 1875
        • 1882
      • diseases >
        • cholera
        • 'Dandy fever'
        • "Spanish" 'flu
people  >
in medical professions  >
doctors >
Cicely Williams

Dr Cicely Williams
       1893 - 1992



     Cicely Williams was born in 1893 at Kew Park, Darliston, Westmoreland, and was educated in Jamaica, partly at Wolmer’s Girls’ School. 

     During  World War I in 1914 she started to take First Aid and nursing classes and thought seriously about studying medicine. In 1916, after her father‘s death she decided to go to Oxford, her father's alma mater. She was one of the women admitted because there were so few male students during the war.

   
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     After graduation in 1923 Cicely decided to specialize in paediatrics and soon applied to the British Colonial Office for an overseas posting. She was sent to the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1929 and spent 7 years there, learning to speak Twi and working to improve health conditions. She established clinics and hospitals and improved record keeping. She also worked with African herbal doctors to learn their treatments for diseases for which European medicine had no cures.
     Dr. Williams' most important work in Africa was her diagnosis of the common and often fatal condition kwashiorkor. She learned that "kwashiorkor" meant the sickness the older child gets when the next baby is born. This seemed to indicate that, when they were no longer breast-fed, children were not receiving enough to eat. The cure for kwashiorkor was therefore education on children's nutritional needs. She quickly published her diagnosis of kwashiorkor as a protein deficiency disease, which attracted the attention of the medical world.
     In the late 1930s she was transferred to Malaya. After suffering from terrible conditions and bad treatment during World War II in Japanese prisoner of war camps, which brought her near to death, she returned to Malaya and was first woman placed in charge of the maternity and child welfare services. She campaigned vigorously against the promotion by the milk companies of dried and canned milk as a substitute for breast-feeding in Third World countries.
     From the late 1940s to the mid-1960s she worked first with the World Health Organization, then as a university lecturer in Jamaica, England and Lebanon. Into her nineties Dr. Williams remained an active speaker in many countries world-wide, on her primary interests of maternal and child health, especially nutrition and breast feeding, birth control, the training of personnel and the development of health services. She was also an active member of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War. She died in England in 1992.

     She is one of many outstanding Jamaican women who have received recognition for their contributions to the world's peoples.
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J. J. Edwards
R. M. Stimpson
E. C. Kinkead
A. E. Forsyth
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