He returned to Australia briefly before undertaking ophthalmology in England (the availability of formal ophthalmology training in Australia was still decades away). He returned to Australia in 1923 to set-up practice in Sydney. Several Sydney hospital appointments followed over the next 29 years.
As a result of the outbreak of WWII and the departure of most Sydney ophthalmologists for military service, Dr Gregg, by then a paediatric ophthalmologist, was one of the few ophthalmologists raining in Sydney (he would have been about 47 at the time and probably ineligible for army service because of his age despite his extensive army track record).
He noticed an unexpectedly high (2-3X) incidence of congenital cataract in infants and, as fate would have it, he overheard some mothers of such children discussing their own medical histories in his waiting room – many had had rubella during their pregnancy.
A quick investigation of the records revealed that 68 out of 78 cases involved rubella during pregnancy.
It transpired that rubella and meningitis had broken out in army camps in 1941 and was spread widely in the community when the infected soldiers returned to their homes.
A 1941 paper on his ‘discovery’ and its follow-up in the lay press brought to light an additional concern of exposure to in utero rubella – congenital deafness. Despite some reservations from the British medical establishment, it was another USyd staff mber, Prof Oliver Lancaster, that proved the association.
He was knighted in 1953 and made the Australian of the Year in 1962 just 4 years before his death aged 74. He was also awarded the James Cook Medal of the Royal Society of NSW in 1951 and a USyd DSc (HC) in 1952.
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