The University of Otago's largest department - preventive and social medicine - which celebrates its 125th anniversary this weekend, had an inauspicious beginning.

The inaugural public health lecture from newly appointed Frank Ogston, from Aberdeen, in 1886 was a chaotic affair as rabble-rousers subjected him to fire from peashooters, derisive hootings and howls and interruptions from tin whistles and key bugles, historian Dr Warwick Brunton says.

Dr Brunton, whose history of the department, The Medicine of the Future, was launched last night, said he had often thought about Ogston when writing the book and whether he could have envisaged today's department as "he stood across the road giving that inaugural lecture to that unenthusiastic audience".

The department's public health education and research has had a local, national and international impact.

Dr Brunton considered that impact was because those involved with public health entered the field with "a degree of almost passion" in an area of medicine which was not glamorous.

However, events such as the Christchurch earthquake showed how fundamental good public health was to human survival.

It was very easy for the public and politicians to take public health for granted, he said.

Leading departmental figures included Sir Charles Hercus, with his emphasis on preventive medicine; Prof Cyril Dixon, who Dr Brunton regarded as "the father of health services research"; and Prof Sir David Skegg, who oversaw enormous expansion of the department when he took it over in 1980, at the age of 31.

Departmental leaders have played an important role in addressing a variety of health issues, including goitre, hydatids and smallpox.

To mark the 125th event, former head of the department 98-year-old Prof Dixon has given a book of bound pamphlets from 1800 written by English smallpox vaccine pioneer Edward Jenner.

The pamphlets, which had "beautiful illustrations", set out Jenner's theories and were the only ones in New Zealand.

They had been given to Prof Dixon on a visit to England in 1965 after a pathologist he knew had gone through the library of a woollen mill owner seeking publications related to his own field.

Discovering the pamphlets, he offered them to Prof Dixon.

A symposium on epidemiology and sexual and reproductive health is being held today at the university as part of the 125th events, honouring the contribution of Prof Skegg in these areas.

Among the speakers will be Emeritus Prof Robert Beaglehole, a former World Health Organisation departmental director.

Tomorrow there will be a public showing of 12 short historic films about public health in the St David St lecture theatre at 2.30pm.

Proceeds from the gold coin donation will go to the quake appeal.