Ebenezer Teichelmann
Ebenezer Teichelmann , known as 'the little Doctor' to his friends, was an Australian-born surgeon, mountaineer, explorer, conservationist and photographer in New Zealand. He was a survivor of the sinking of the SS Marquette in 1915. He achieved 26 first ascents of mountains and seven first ascents, or crossings, of passes, cols, or saddles, and is credited with reviving climbing in New Zealand when the sport was almost dead. A keen photographer, he used a full-plate glass camera, which was hauled up many mountains. His photographs were used in books and advertisements, and helped to achieve conservation status for West Coast reserves.
Early life and education
Teichelmann was born on 23 March 1859 near Callington, South Australia, the ninth child of fifteen born to German Lutheran missionary Christian Teichelmann and his Scottish wife Margaret, Nicholson. The Teichelmanns could only afford secondary education for one child, Ebenezer. The family worked a farm, also called Ebenezer, at Morphett Vale, outside Adelaide, finding the funds available to a missionary to be insufficient to support them.Teichelmann was educated at Hahndorf College, and boarded there from 1869–1873, but when the family moved to the Yorke Peninsula in 1873 Teichelmann remained behind in Adelaide and had himself apprenticed to a pharmacist. Finishing his apprenticeship, he was able to work as a dispensing chemist to a doctor while studying medicine at the University of Adelaide.
In 1882, Teichelmann travelled to Queen's College, Birmingham and demonstrated physiology at Mason Science College. Teichelmann undertook postgraduate study in Dublin, specialising in surgery, and at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. After this he served as assistant physician and resident pathologist at Birmingham General Hospital, assistant surgeon at Jaffray Hospital, and resident medical officer to the Birmingham Workhouse. During the ten years he spent in England and Ireland, Teichelmann also worked as private assistant to Lawson Tait, a gynaecologist who pioneered surgical treatment of ectopic pregnancy, in Birmingham and for two years had a private practice. He had also become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, a Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and an Associate of the Mason Science College in Birmingham.
While in Birmingham, Teichelmann met Mary Bettney, who had been matron at a Birmingham hospital. They were married in West Bromwich in the last quarter of 1891.
Return to Adelaide
In 1892, the Teichelmanns travelled to Melbourne, with Teichelmann working as the ship's doctor on the Yarrawonga. On his return Teichelmann took up the post of health officer at Port Adelaide. Teichelmann worked for five years in Adelaide, during which he was a Surgeon Lieutenant and then Surgeon Captain for the South Australian military, and was locum tenens for Professor Edward Stirling, professor of physiology at Adelaide University, while he was on leave in England. The Adelaide hospital was in dispute with its staff for much of the 1890s, and in 1896 there was a mass resignation of honorary and medical staff, although with staff continuing to care for their patients until replacements were appointed. When Teichelmann was offered a position as Senior Surgeon he declined, explaining later "I did not care to go back on my brother professionals. My one chance in Adelaide was gone and I decided to go away."Emigration to New Zealand
Teichelmann successfully applied for the position of Surgical Superintendent of the Westland District Hospital, in Hokitika on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. In 1897, the Teichelmanns arrived in Hokitika, where Teichelmann initially set up his private practice in a room at the Kellers Hotel, before commissioning a builder to construct a new residence and private surgery on 20 Hamilton Street. As the sole doctor to a population scattered over 380 kilometres of rugged coastline, Teichelmann was required to be an excellent surgeon and a good administrator. The Westland Hospital provided maternity, surgical, geriatric and medical services, using four wards capable of holding 50 patients. Teichelmann also operated private consulting rooms and a small nursing and convalescent hospital at his Hamilton Street residence, staffed by an onsite housekeeper and a nurse. He was ably assisted for many years both in his private practice and at the hospital by nurse Bess Hudson.Teichelmann's responsibilities required him to travel at all hours of the day or night in what was a remote and rugged area, often with little more than a track to follow, and where few rivers were bridged. Accidents were commonplace, with mining, land clearing and tree felling being common activities in the area. The year Teichelmann arrived, he treated several people for smoke inhalation and burns after fire destroyed eight buildings on Revell Street, including the Golden Age Hotel, and the Hokitika Guardian and Evening Star newspaper offices and archives. The following year a fall of sand and soil buried miners in Craig's Freehold in South Hokitika, killing three men. On one occasion Teichelmann and Nurse Hudson manned a railway jigger for at night to reach a patient in Ruatapu.
The Teichelmanns settled easily into small-town life. Mary Teichelmann became known as an emancipated woman and a trendsetter, and was the first woman in the town to smoke in public, play golf, and one of the first to drive a car. She also supported the hospital by raising more than £8 for an invalid chair, for which she received a public vote of thanks. In 1909, aged 46, Mary became ill and spent several days in bed. She died suddenly of a heart attack while her husband was at Blue Spur, and the local newspaper reported that a gloom was cast over the entire town at her unexpected death.
In 1912, Teichelmann requested a leave of absence from his post to update his medical skills, citing the isolation of his position, and New Zealand as a whole, as a motivating factor. He planned to spend seven or eight months observing doctors in major hospitals in Europe, before a holiday in the Swiss Alps. The township farewelled him on 22 March 1912, in a gathering at the Hotel Westland, with speeches and a rendition of La Marseillaise, and presented him with a gold watch and chain. Teichelmann travelled to Europe, spending time in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Vienna, Dresden, Leipzig and Paris, as well as period climbing in Zermatt, and attending the sixth International Gynecological and Obstetric Congress in Berlin. On his return to New Zealand in January 1913 he described the advances in motor transport in London, such that horses were rarely to be seen, and several visits to Hendon aerodrome, where he was impressed with England's progress in aviation, but also mentioned that prevalent strikes made things generally unsatisfactory.
War service
With a German father and a Scottish mother, Teichelmann was in an unenviable position when war was declared on 4 August 1914. He was a Surgeon Major in the New Zealand Medical Corps with the 13th Canterbury Regiment since 1907, and he expected to serve but was not initially called up, possibly because of his German name or his age. Teichelmann wrote to the British War Office and to James Allen, the New Zealand Defence Minister, requesting to be allowed to do his duty, and was eventually called up to the Medical Corps on 25 August 1915, and assigned to the Sixth Reinforcements. He sailed in September 1915 and joined the No 1 Stationary Hospital in Port Said Egypt on 9 October 1915. Shortly after his arrival the hospital was instructed to move to another location. Teichelmann boarded the troopship SS Marquette in Alexandria along with other medical personnel from the hospital, including a contingent of 36 New Zealand nurses, and the Ammunition Column of the British 29th Division. Four days later, in the Gulf of Salonika, the Marquette was torpedoed and sank within seven minutes. One hundred and seventy people died, some in the explosion, some when lifeboats were incorrectly launched, and some by drowning or exhaustion. Teichelmann spent several hours in the water but was eventually rescued.The Stationary Hospital was reestablished using marquees in Lembet Camp in Greece, where they received patients from the front lines in Doiran and Gallipoli. Alongside the more usual problems of typhoid, para-typhoid, and dysentery, strong winds, sleet and snow at the end of November 1915 caused severe frostbite injuries which Teichelmann, with his mountaineering experience, was well-qualified to treat. In March 1916, the Stationary Hospital was relocated back to Port Said, and then in July of that year Teichelmann was attached to the 2nd General Hospital based in Le Havre, France.
It was around this time that the Anti-German League in New Zealand was stirring up sentiment against people with German heritage and German-sounding names. MP for Grey Lynn, John Payne, tabled a list of 50 names of "German suspects" in Parliament, including that of Teichelmann, prompting a strong response from Hokitika Mayor George Perry, who said "Dr Teichelmann has been for twenty years a citizen of this town and is widely known and respected. He is a British Subject, and the Council of which he was a member deeply resents the action of the member for Grey Lynn in bringing Dr Teichelmann's name before the House in the list of German suspects and regards his action as an insufferable insult to the town and district."
Teichelmann served at the Hornchurch Convalescent Hospital and the Codford Depot on Salisbury Plain, before returning to New Zealand as surgeon aboard the hospital ship SS Maheno, arriving in December 1916. Shortly after his return, in January 1917, a close friend Dr Herbert Macandrew died. Macandrew was honorary curator of the Hokitika Museum, and had been active in the Westland Institute with Teichelmann. Macandrew had been medical officer at the Seaview Asylum and Teichelmann took over this role from 1916 to 1921.
In 1918, the influenza epidemic came to Hokitika. News from Europe prepared people in New Zealand for what to expect. The first cases in Hokitika were reported on 13 November, and were followed the next day by a public meeting calling for volunteers to assist with dealing with the effects. Inhalation chambers were set up in the library and a drill shed, and on 15 November, when Westland Hospital was already crowded with patients, Teichelmann opened a further twenty beds at the Victoria School. Further beds were placed in St Mary's Club Rooms on 19 November, by which time 13 people had already died. A medical student sent from Dunedin to assist Teichelmann became ill himself, as did many of the nursing staff, four of whom died. In less than three weeks, influenza killed 27 people in Hokitika.