Esmond Venner Keogh

Colonel Esmond Venner (Bill) Keogh, (21 November 1895 – 30 September 1970) was an Australian physician, medical scientist, and army officer who was instrumental in saving thousands of lives from tuberculosis, polio, cancer and other diseases. Keogh entered the University of Melbourne in 1914, but did not complete his course, as he enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) after the outbreak of the First World War, and fought in the Gallipoli Campaign with the 3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance. In 1916 he transferred to the 9th Machine Gun Company, and fought on the Western Front, where he was wounded, and was awarded the Military Medal and Distinguished Conduct Medal for gallantry. In 1922 Keogh returned to the University of Melbourne. He qualified as a doctor and joined the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories as a medical officer. In 1939 he joined the Second Australian Imperial Force and served in the Middle East as a pathologist. He became the Assistant Director of Pathology at Allied Land Forces headquarters in Australia in 1942 and the Director of Hygiene, Entomology and Pathology in 1944. In these roles he directed the Australian Army's struggle against dysentery, typhoid and malaria, and he oversaw the production of penicillin in Australia. After the war he directed public health campaigns against tuberculosis, polio and cancer. Early life Esmond Venner Keogh was born in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern on 21 November 1895, the son of Esmond Joseph Keogh, an estate agent, and his wife Helen Beatrice Moore, a nurse. He had two older sisters, Lesbia and Estelle, and a younger brother, Gerard Basil (Gerry). His father's estate agency business failed and his parents separated around 1900. His father moved to Western Australia, where he became a labourer with the Public Works Department; his mother was engaged to care for four young children whose parents, friends of hers, had been killed in an accident. For a time, Esmond and his brother Gerry lived in South Yarra with their father's brother, Eustace Keogh, a medical doctor. His mother inherited £2,000 from her father-in-law Edmund Keogh's estate and used the money to buy a property and open a hostel for nurses, which evolved into a nurses' employment agency.