'The Cleanest Man on Earth': Harcourt Whipple Ellis and the NLA Australian Newspapers.

The National Library of Australia (NLA) Australian Newspapers project went public in July 2008, but many historians and researchers are as yet unaware of its existence, or of its great potential for their research. This article will demonstrate the revolutionary potential of this project for the history of medicine in Australia. Using the case of a largely-forgotten Western Australian chemist, dentist, and optician, Harcourt Whipple Ellis, a search of the NLA Australian Newspapers project produces a substantial amount of information on his at times scandalous career, a general physical description, a verbatim quotation, and many other witnesses' statements attributed to him. These newspaper articles 'flesh out' Ellis, and also provide valuable insights into early-twentieth-century life in Perth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]