Ida Mann

Biography

• Born February 6, 1893 in Kilburn, London
• 1914 – Commenced medical training at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women, London
• 1917 – Transferred to St Mary’s Hospital, London for clinical training. However she persuaded Professor John Ernest Sullivan Frazer (1870-1946) to allow her to study study embryology and thus became the first woman “to enter the dissection room (never before consecrated by a female)…and to invade the physiology department”
• 1920 – Graduated medicine MB BS from the University of London; MRCS, LRCP.
• 1921-1925 Ophthalmic House Surgeon, St Mary’s Hospital, London
• 1927-1949 Ophthalmic surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital; FRCS (1927).
• 1928 – DSc, University of London. Her thesis, rewritten and expanded, was published as the classic textbook The Development of the Human Eye ‘twice revised and never replaced…’. Appointed the first Ophthalmic Surgeon to The Royal Free Hospital for Women.
• 1929-1931 Research into the living comparative anatomy of the vertebrate eye at London Zoo.
• 1941-1944 Margaret Ogilvie Reader in Ophthalmology, University of Oxford
• 1944-1947 Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Oxford
• 1945-1949 Senior Surgeon, Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, Moorfields
• 1949 – Emigrated to Australia and Western Australia’s warmer climate due to the ill health of her husband Prof William Ewart Gye (1889-1952), the retired Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Laboratories.
• 1949-1952 Ophthalmic Consultant at Royal Perth Hospital and King Edward Memorial Hospital.
• 1950 – Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE)
• 1950-1979 Private practice in Perth, Western Australia invested by Sir James Mitchell, Government House Perth, 21 June
• 1952 – Following the sudden death of her husband, Mann was set to return to England but instead took the position of ophthalmic advisor to the Western Australian state government, investigating the eye problems of the indigenous population in the North-West. She diagnosed a trachoma epidemic amongst Indigenous people in the Kimberley and travelled extensively in Western Australia in order to examine and treat Indigenous people with trachoma. Mann became convinced that better housing and sanitation, rather than administration of antibiotics, would improve this health crisis. Later her investigations into communicable eye diseases extended to the Territory of Papua and New Guinea and to Taiwan
• 1953-1974 Member of the Research Committee, Ophthalmologic Research Institute of Australia
• 1954 – President, Ophthalmological Society of Australia
• 1976 – Retired
• 1980 – Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) for services to the welfare of Aboriginal people.
• Honorary doctorates by the University of Western Australia (1977) and Murdoch University (1983).
• Awards: Doyne Medal, Oxford Ophthalmological Congress (1929); Nettleship Medal, the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom (1930); Howe Medal, American Ophthalmological Society (1958); Bowman Lectureship and Medal, Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom (1961); Jose Rizal Medal, Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology (1972);
• Died November 19, 1983 in Dalkeith, Perth, Western Australia

Medical Eponyms

Ida Mann classification of Coloboma (1937)

• Type 1: coloboma extending above the anatomic disc
• Type 2: coloboma extending up to superior border of disc
• Type 3: coloboma extending below the lower border of disc
• Type 4: coloboma involving the disc only
• Type 5: coloboma present below the disc with normal retina above and below the coloboma
• Type 6: pigmentation present in the periphery
• Type 7: coloboma involving only the periphery

Mann I. Developmental abnormalities of the eye. 1937: 65–103

Key Medical Contributions

Reptile research

Ida worked in the Reptile House with the Curator, Joan Proctor armed with a slit lamp and an electric ophthalmoscope. She produced over 200 meticulous drawings and presented three Memorial Lectures.

It was the fashion of the day for a lady to wear a fur around her neck, however at her 1930 Nettleship Medal Lecture on the Reptilian iris, Ida famously ditched the fashionable fur preferring instead to drape her favourite cobra…live but chilled.

Proctor died suddenly in 1931 and Ida presented to the London Zoological Society a lengthy paper with 57 beautiful coloured drawings on “The Iris Pattern in Vertebrates – to the Memory of Joan Beauchamp Proctor”

Slit Lamp

Contact lenses

Major Publications

• Mann IC. Notes on the Anatomy of the living Eye, as revealed by the Gullstrand Slitlamp. J Anat. 1925;59(Pt 2):155-165.
• Mann I. The Development of the Human Eye, British Medical Association. 1928
• Mann I. Reptilian iris [Nettleship Medal Lecture]. Transactions of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom 1930; 50: 310-317
• Mann I. Iris Pattern in the Vertebrates. The Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, 1931; 21(4): 355-412
• Mann I. Developmental Defects of the Lens and Their Embryology. Glasgow Med J. 1935;124(2):49-65.
• Mann I. Developmental abnormalities of the Human Eye, British Medical Association. 1937
• Mann I. Three Cases Fitted with Contact Lenses. Proc R Soc Med. 1939;32(7):759.
• Mann I, Pullinger BD. Experiments on the effect of ascorbic acid in mustard gas burns of the eye. Br J Ophthalmol. 1940; 24(9): 444-451
• Mann I. Study of 84 cases of delayed mustard gas keratitis fitted with contact lenses. Br J Ophthalmol. 1944;28(9):441-447.
• Mann I, Pirie A. Science of Seeing. 1946
• Mann I, Pullinger BD. An experimental and clinical study of the reaction of the anterior segment of the eye to chemical injury, with special reference to chemical warfare agents. Br J Ophthalmol Monograph supplement XIII. 1948
• Mann I. Ophthalmic survey of the Kimberley Division of Western Australia. 1954
• Mann I, Loschdorfer J. Ophthalmic Survey Of The Territories Of Papua And New Guinea. 1955
• Mann I. Culture, Race, Climate and Eye Disease. An Introduction to the Study of Geographical Ophthalmology. 1966
• Mann I, Golding R. The chase: An autobiography. 1983

References

• Potter D. The beginning of The Chase: the embryological career of Ida Mann; The Ophthalmological Society of New Zealand 39th scientific conference, 1985.. Aust N Z J Ophthalmol. 1986;14(2):97-107.
• Blackman B. Ida Mann interview . National Library of Australia. 1981
• Yates T, Constable I, Lowe R. Dame Ida Caroline Mann, 1893–1983: DBE, MB, BS, PhD (Lond), MA (Oxon), MD (Hon) (WA), FRCS, FRACS, FRACO. Australian Journal of Opthalmology. 1984; 12(1): 95
• Dame Ida Mann, CBE, MA, DSc, MB, BS, FRCS, FRACS. British Journal of Ophthalmology 1984; 68: 219
• Potter D. Ida Mann–her wartime career, 1939-1949. Aust N Z J Ophthalmol. 1989;17(1):95-101.
• Buckley EI, Potter DU. Ida and the Eye: A Woman in British Ophthalmology. 1998
• Biography: Mann, Dame Ida Caroline (1893 – 1983). Plarr’s Lives of the Fellows Online. Royal College of Surgeons of England.
• Cohn H. Mann, Ida Caroline (1893 – 1983). Encylopedia of Australian Science.
• Byrne G. Mann, Dame Ida Caroline (1893–1983). Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2012; 18
• Mann, Ida Caroline (1893 – 1983). The Australian Women’s Register
• Erickson D. Mann, Ida Caroline (1893 – 1983). Encyclopedia of women and leadership
• Bibliography. Mann, Ida 1893-1983. WorldCat Identities