Prior to European colonization of Australia, Australia's Indigenous peoples had their own notions of identity, health and well-being. Their ideologies of health, however, failed to cope with the catastrophic new infections and diseases introduced by the colonizers. The promise of western medicine neither solved nor offered respite to these often rampant and ravaging diseases. Counting, Health and Identity investigates Indigenous and colonist thinking, ideologies and responses to disease and health, particularly as they manifest in demographic dilemmas in Western Australia and Queensland, from 1900 to 1940. Briscoe's investigation of this period blasts open some of the blockages historians may face in presenting a "balanced" view of Australian history, freeing the flow of intellectual thought in response to Aboriginal and Australian history.