Resumen de Public Dental Services, Queensland, Australia: Charles Octavius Vidgen
Harry Francis Akers, Michael Anthony Foley, John P. Brown, Valerie Woodford
Charles Octavius Vidgen was the Superintendent of the Brisbane Dental Hospital, c 1917-1945. Hitherto, commentators' reviews rely- on imposing but narrow streams of evidence to either ignore Vidgen's influence on the dental profession or portray it as both peripheral and controversial. In this account, the authors use historical method to provide a revisionist account ofVidgen's professional profile and, to a lesser extent, a character resurrection. Vidgen was probably introverted. His orientation relating to dental education became obsolete, inappropriate and disruptive. Vidgen's actions, beliefs and values incurred sustained and organized opposition from academe, the Australian Dental Association Queensland Branch, the Odontological Society of Queensland and some private practitioners. The sociopolitical context, namely the Great Depression and affiliated reconstruction, the community's demand for government-administered dental services, World War II, twenty-five years of continuous Australian Labor Party government in Queensland, Edward Hanlon's authoritarianism and the emergence of a welfare state were also relevant to Vidgen's becoming a nonconformist, nonjoiner and an outcast. However, the authors posit that, for the socially disadvantaged and the regionally and remotely domiciled, Vidgen was a humanitarian and a quiet social reformer who, under Hanlon's authority and tutelage, pioneered enduring changes to the delivery of dental services across Queensland.
