Edward Shorter PhD

Faculty of Medicine University of Toronto CANADA

Re Ideology and Aetiology: RSI, an Epidemic of Craft Palsy

I found this thesis most impressive and I unconditionally recommend its acceptance. This thesis takes a scholarly look at the epidemic of 'Repetition Strain Injury" (RSI) that affected Australia during the l980s, placing the epidemic in the context of writing on international patterns of epidemic hysteria and of Australian medical politics and labour relations. The author's conclusion, that RSI represented a combination of suggestibility on the part of sufferers, self-serving aggrandisement on the part of some members of the medical profession, and a Labour-relations strategy on the part of the unions strikes me as well born out by the facts. Lucire has reconstructed this story on the basis of primary sources, has set it within the framework of medical sociology, and has told it in a literate and lively manner.

That the author herself had a partisan role in the events she describes does not detract from the scholarly value of the thesis: Given the research she had done, I think it would be difficult to come to any conclusion other than the one she reaches.

The dissertation represents that rather rare bird, a scholarly study that has the ability to make a considerable impact on public policy and discussion. A triumph of original scholarship and thought, it deserves to be published as a book. Lucire's work should have a considerable impact on the debate about such vexing conditions as RSI, both in Australia and abroad.

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