ABSTRACT
The colony of New South Wales began as an open gaol designed to relieve administrative problems of an anxious British government. Captain Arthur Phillip was appointed Governor and Captain General of this gaol colony. Surgeon John White was the first head of the colonial medical service. He and three colleagues had been recognised as a necessary part of the new colony from the planning stages in England. The continuity of social concept was thereby maintained; it was a facility for the sick poor of the colony. Consider for example, the first ten years of the existence of the colony of South Australia. Costs were sometimes controversial—the minimum was often argued over, emphasising yet again how much the attitude of the leaders in the colony and in London was to treat such problems of social policy as residual and insignificant. Developments in this field were later in Van Diemen's Land, probably because of the smaller size of the southern penal colony.
