University of Edinburgh: Chair of Public Health

Abstract

THE University Court of the University of Edinburgh, in appointing Prof. F. A. E. Crew to the Bruce and John Usher chair of public health, has made an interesting and significant break with tradition. Prof. Crew's association with the University, as teacher and research worker, began in the Department of Zoology and continued in the Institute of Animal Genetics, of which he became the first director in 1921, and the first occupant of the Buchanan chair of animal genetics in 1928. In the Institute he gathered about him a notable band of scientific workers from many nations, and these he inspired with his own enthusiasm, so that a steady stream of the results of research in various directions issued from the laboratories. Prof. Crew's transference from animal genetics to public health indicates a change of outlook in health teaching in relation to the populace. In place of emphasizing, as established courses of instruction have done, aspects of control of infection and the improvement of health by better methods of sanitation and environmental conditions in general, the new outlook, from a biological background, envisages a drive for positive health education backed by tuition in social biology and social medicine.