what a wonderful snapshot of the times. Very interesting reading especially the annual reports with lists of donations, I have to wonder if it would make a subject for indexing, the donations, so many names from the area some with occupations and places of residence. in one year I saw names of shearers who donated money, someone who gave a donation thanks to the finding of a lost cow, and the crews of ships and dredges donating money, possibly some of it was to say thanks for the care of a mate, also interesting to see 3 times more men than women were treated. does that reflect the balance of population. also interesting to see the types of illnesses only 1 asthma that year but lots of general infections, tb etc. Do you know if other years are available at all and not indexed yet or not surviving. Thanks to the hopsital and Susie.

Hi Linda, You're so right - there is some wonderful information in there - the names but also the growth and extensions to the hospital. And looking at the categories of diseases and number of deaths from different ones ... all fascinating reading. I would be very surprised if the hospital library didn't have the full set of Annual Reports - and from memory there is a set at the Geelong Heritage Centre - I think a lot of the Heritage Centre collection came from Roy Lang (Dr W R Lang) who wrote "Visions & Realities: a history of the Geelong Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum". I think it included his notes etc. he compiled for the book. I chuckled when you mentioned the value of indexing the collection! I should be able to include these .pdf files in the standard search facility on the web site but there are a few technical issues stopping that from happening. Each .pdf file is fully searchable within Acrobat but at this stage I'm not just making progress with sorting out the global search. I understand the basics of the problem - these are scanned images that have been made searchable whereas all the other .pdf files on my site were text in the first place. Anyway, enough of the technical part - there is no question that they would be worth indexing and added to the Potpourri Database. I'll address that in a separate email! All the best ........... Susie Z -----Original Message----- From: aus-vic-geelong-district-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:aus-vic-geelong-district-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Stan & Linda Edwards Sent: Saturday, 7 November 2009 9:01 AM To: aus-vic-geelong-district@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [GEELONG] Geelong Hospital Annual Reports etc [new on web site] what a wonderful snapshot of the times. Very interesting reading especially the annual reports with lists of donations,