South Australian Medical Heritage Society Inc

Matthias Erichsen MB BS [1884-1962]

A photograph of Matthias Erichsen, circa 1940.

Matthias 'Joe' Erichsen MB BS was the first president of the SA Branch of the AMA (then the BMA) not of British ancestry, being elected to that post 60 years after the association's formation.

Born in Adelaide and raised in Yorketown, Matthias's parents were Matthias Erichsen (1840-1920) merchant and future town Mayor, and Mathilda Bertha nee Gericke (1850-1927). Both had migrated from Germany, although his father was ethnically Danish. Erichsen attended Prince Alfred College in Adelaide, then the University of Adelaide from which he graduated in 1908. He served a year as a resident medical officer at the Adelaide Hospital, and in 1910 took up the partly government-funded position of doctor in Pinnaroo. Erichsen was the first doctor there, the town having only recently been established. He was well-liked and showed skill in all branches of the profession, as well as being a magistrate and taking part in the numerous social and sporting activities. During the First World War he was an honorary captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps Reserve.

Having married Clarice Irene 'Rene' Duke (1885-1977) of New Zealand in 1911, Erichsen moved to Adelaide in 1918. The couple were childless but both were involved in charitable work, including donating land for a new town hall in Yorketown, and gifting his old school (he was President of its past scholars association). In 1949/50 when Erichsen served as President of the Rotary Club of Adelaide, Rene took on the not inconsiderable task of being his consort. Erichsen had a passion for golf, one that he shared with his wife. In later years he played lawn bowls.

Erichsen worked from his comfortable North Adelaide home and consulting rooms on North Terrace, and held admitting rights in a number of private hospitals as well as being an honorary medical officer for the Royal Institute for the Blind. Acknowledgements from numerous grateful patients, mostly obstetric, were published in newspapers over the next 40 years. In 1939 Erichsen was elected president of the SA Branch of the BMA and supervised its transition to a wartime role in WW2. He went on to represent the BMA on the government Medical Co-ordination Committee.

In modern-day parlance, Matthias Erichsen was the first example of diversity amongst the presidents of the South Australian BMA/AMA. The next, the first female president, was Jenny Linn in 1980 and then the first president not of European ancestry, William Tam in 2017.

PK