Lucy Meredith Bryce

Lucy Meredith Bryce CBE (12 June 1897 – 30 July 1968) was an Australian haematologist and medical researcher, who worked with the Australian Red Cross Society to establish the first blood transfusion service in Australia.[1]

Early life and education

Lucy Bryce was born in Lindfield, New South Wales, and educated in Melbourne, at the Melbourne Girls Grammar School. She earned degrees at the University of Melbourne in 1918 (B.Sc.) and 1922 (M.B., B.S.).[2]

Career

Bryce started her career at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research after college. While still in her twenties, she spent a year working at the Lister Institute in London. From 1928 to 1934, she was on staff as a bacteriologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, before launching a private practice as a pathologist.

Beginning in 1929, Bryce was the founding director of the Victoria Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service, which was Australia's first blood transfusion service.[3] Her work involved planning how donors should be screened, and how blood should be typed and stored, and supervising the establishment of a blood reserve in case of major disaster.[4][5]

During World War II, Bryce held the rank of major in the Australian Army Medical Corps[6] and was invited in 1944 to the US with Marjorie Bick to study developments in blood transfusion,[7] then again with Bick in 1945, arriving on the S.S. Kanangoora in March[8] to visit the Hooper Research Foundation in Los Angeles then to New Orleans and Washington,[9] attending a conference of the blood substitute committee of the National Research Council.[10] Bryce then traveled to investigate clinical methods while Bick stayed on at Harvard.[11][12] She reported on the mass production methods at the Cutter Laboratories of packing and shipping plasma and whole blood to be parachuted into the Pacific war zones.[10] Their research coincided with a plan to expand the Blood Bank into a new floor of the Royal Melbourne Hospital.[13]

In 1948, she was called upon as an expert witness in a case involving the identification of two newborns, alleged to have been switched at birth.[14]

Bryce retired from active involvement in the Blood Bank in 1954, but continued to hold her title as honorary chair of the transfusion committee until 1966.[15] She was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1951 for this work.[16][17] Bryce wrote a history of the transfusion service, An Abiding Gladness (1965), as well as many scientific articles.[18][19]

Personal life and legacy

Bryce died in 1968, age 72.[2]

There is a crater on Venus named for Bryce,[20] and a portrait of her is on display in Lucy Bryce Hall, which houses the Central Blood Bank in Melbourne.[21] Bryce Place in the Canberra suburb of Florey is named in her honour.[22]

In 2001 Bryce was inducted to the Victorian Honour Roll of Women.

References
  1. Penny Robinson, "Australian Red Cross Blood Service" Australian Women's Archive Project, The Australian Women's Register, created 10 February 2004.
  2. M. L. Verso, 'Bryce, Lucy Meredith (1897–1968)' Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 2 January 2016.
  3. Matthew Klugman, Blood Matters: A Social History of the Victoria Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service (Australia Scholarly Publishing 2004). ISBN 1740970667
  4. Walter & Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research: Contributions to Society, "1939: The Institute Joins Forces with the Red Cross to Provide Wartimes Blood Transfusion Services".
  5. Mark Cortiula, "Going Back to the Future: The Origins of a National Blood Service in Australia" Archived 27 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine in Ken Davis, ed., Topics in Transfusion Medicine 5(1)(1998): 20–22.
  6. G. J. McCarthy, "Lucy Meredith Bryce" Encyclopedia of Australian Science, entry created 20 October 1993.
  7. "WOMEN'S NEWS". Daily Telegraph. 15 August 1944. Retrieved 23 July 2022.
  8. "VICTORIA". Guinea Gold. 2 March 1945. Retrieved 23 July 2022.
  9. "Blood Plasma Now Mass Produced In U.S.A." Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate. 4 May 1945. Retrieved 23 July 2022.
  10. "Woman's World". Herald. 30 April 1945. Retrieved 23 July 2022.
  11. Australian Red Cross Society.; Australian Red Cross Society. (1965), "v. : ill. ; 25 cm.", Annual report, Melbourne: The Society, ISSN 1035-1809, nla.obj-61759344, retrieved 23 July 2022 – via Trove
  12. "Australians To Study Blood Transfusions". Courier-Mail. 28 February 1945. Retrieved 23 July 2022.
  13. "Blood Bank For State". Age. 6 April 1945. Retrieved 23 July 2022.
  14. "New Witness Testifies in Baby Case" The Age (13 November 1948): 3.
  15. Ann Westmore, "Lucy Meredith Bryce" Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine History of Medicine, Dentistry, and Health Sciences, Centre for the Study of Health and Society, 8 September 2003.
  16. "Dr Lucy Meredith Bryce". It's an Honour. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
  17. "What goes on? She made her pioneering work saving lives". The Argus. Melbourne. 1 January 1951. p. 4. Retrieved 2 January 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
  18. D. C. Cowling, "College Roll: Lucy Meredith Bryce" Royal Australasian College of Physicians.
  19. Lucy Meredith Bryce, An Abiding Gladness: The Background of Contemporary Blood Transfusion and Its Story During the Years 1929–1959 in the Victorian Division of the Australian Red Cross Society (Georgian House Pty. Limited 1965).
  20. Joel F. Russell, Gazetteer of Venusian Nomenclature (US Geological Survey, Open-File Report 94-235, May 1994): 16.
  21. "Dr. Lucy Bryce to be Honored" The Age (30 April 1959): 8.
  22. "Commonwealth of Australia Gazette. Periodic (National : 1977 - 2011) - 15 May 1987 - p6". Trove. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
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