DR EDWIN (Ted) Cordeaux Blomfield was a much loved Bega doctor.
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He was born in 1917 on a sheep station at Inverell, NSW, and his early schooling was in a one-teacher school at Wandsworth. When he was 10 he was sent as a boarder to the New England Grammar School at Glen Innes.
“It was a spartan life and I didn't like it very much, but as we lived 28 miles out in the country, there wasn't much choice,” he said.
The boys studied French, Latin, English, mathematics, geography, chemistry and history. They were also taught to be well mannered and meals were very formal.
Prayers were held every morning and church on Sunday was compulsory. The social life for the boys was limited with only two dances in the six years Ted was there.
Sports were rugby league, cricket, tennis and athletics and the latter was young Ted's choice. He gained no great heights in his chosen sport but did run 100 yards in 10 seconds which wasn't bad for those days.
On holidays, Ted rode, shot and fished with his brother and two sisters.
He couldn't matriculate from his Glenn Innes school as he would have been the only one in the class, so he was sent to North Sydney Boys' High for the last year of his secondary schooling, and lived with an aunt. The prospect of coming to a city school he found somewhat daunting.
From school he went to the University of Sydney to study medicine as his parents wished. It was a six-year course and, because of an operation on his appendix at a crucial time in the first year, he failed and had to repeat.
In the first two years, chemistry, physics and botany were studied with bio-chemistry and physiology added in the third year. The fourth year course covered pathology, bacteriology, medicine and surgery.
The next year dermatology, urology, psychiatry and obstetrics were among the subjects, plus surgery. The last year covered medicine, surgery and obstetrics.
Ted Blomfield started in course in 1933 when tuberculosis was rife.
The students worked for a while at the Waterfall sanatorium where there were about 100 beds, always full. That was only one of the state's sanatoriums, while hospitals always had wards full of TB patients.
Ted was a resident of St Paul's College while at university and, because of the demands of the course, had very little social life. Not that there was much offering.
More on Dr Blomfield next week.