London School Of Tropical Medicine Research Articles

Natural history of parasitic disease. Patrick Manson's philosophical method.

A distinct British approach to disease in the tropics has been identified in the recent historiography of colonial medicine: Mansonian tropical medicine, named after Sir Patrick Manson (1844-1922), the founder of the London School of Tropical Medicine. This essay examines Manson's study of filariasis (infection with the filarial nematode worm) and argues that his conceptual tools and research framework were derived from contemporary natural history. It investigates Manson's training in natural history at the University of Aberdeen, where some of his teachers were closely associated with transcendental biology. The concepts of perfect adaptation and the harmony of nature were crucial to the formulation of his research problematic. This essay demonstrates that biogeographical concepts played an important part in Manson's research methodology. It also investigates how Manson's natural historical approach contributed to the making of so-called Mansonian tropical medicine.

Imperial Medicine: Patrick Manson and the Conquest of Tropical Disease (review)

Reviewed by: Imperial Medicine: Patrick Manson and the Conquest of Tropical Disease Sarah Hodges Douglas M. Haynes, Imperial Medicine: Patrick Manson and the Conquest of Tropical Disease. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) What is imperial medicine? For many years in their memoirs and biographies, imperial doctors described their work as a combination of conducting research on exotic diseases, ministering to merchant seamen, and telling anecdotes about removing leeches from the occasional American naturalist’s nose. 1 Haynes’ book is a welcome departure from this heroic tale, and joins the growing field of critical historical studies of medicine and empire. Using key episodes in the career of British doctor and medical researcher Patrick Manson (1844–1922), a man popularly described as the “Father of Tropical Medicine,” Haynes redirects our attention away from tale of solitary research in torpid conditions and instead illuminates a set of individual and institutional relationships and knowledges particular to “imperial medicine.” Imperial Medicine is about the history of the Victorian medical profession and the conditions for medical research in an age of empire. Distinguishing himself from the growing literature on imperialism and science, technology and medicine (STM), Haynes’ use of the term “imperial” is not driven by an analysis of the relations between ruler and ruled as they were mediated and rearticulated via medical knowledge and practice. 2 Rather, Haynes uses the term “imperial medicine” to describe the global network of research alliances formed by a cohort of Victorian-trained doctors. This position is consistent with what Haynes has argued elsewhere: that to read the history of tropical medicine as an epi-phenomenon of imperialism is reductionist at best. Instead, Haynes aims to situate tropical medicine “not only on the context of imperialism and colonialism; but also in terms of the social history of medicine and science and British society more generally.” 3 Haynes uses Manson’s medical education and early career (Chapter 1) to demonstrate how empire created opportunities for doctors with less-prestigious Scottish or Irish medical degrees, and thereby how empire served as an outlet for the perceived crisis of professional “overpopulation” in Victorian Britain. Manson received his medical degree from Aberdeen in 1865 and began his medical career in China in 1866 where he was to remain for the next twenty-three years. However, as Haynes shows, to be a doctor in empire was generally seen as a second-rate option, in terms of both prestige and money. Why then should imperial doctors, like Manson and others, have conducted research at all? Medical research was not a significant part of or supported robustly in nineteenth-century colonial policy. 4 Yet Manson rose to global fame through his research on the nature of the transmission of parasite-borne infections, such as filariasis and malaria. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 chronicle in great detail the twists and turns of Manson’s medical research and collaborations (those unfamiliar with the specifics of biology may find some of the more technical descriptions in these chapters heavy-going). Haynes argues “for Manson as for other imperial doctors, research provided a cultural vehicle to transcend the geographical marginality of the periphery by participating in a far-flung community of investigators engaged in producing knowledge about the empire” (p. 48). Further, Haynes argues, the research of imperial doctors was not simply a “rudimentary collection of information as directed from the metropole. Rather, they participated as active agents in the constitution of British medicine as imperial medicine” (p. 49). Haynes uses Manson’s career and his research correspondences with doctors in India, Cape Town, Samoa, Ceylon, Burma, Nigeria, Morocco, New Guinea, Demerara and the West Indies, to argue that the conversations among imperial doctors, while certainly mediated by their experience of metropole, were conducted despite the metropole rather than facilitated by it. Haynes’s book can thus be read as an attempt to break away from the core-periphery model of scientific “exchange” or “diffusion” that has heretofore dogged analyses of imperialism and STM. The final two chapters (5 and 6) discuss Manson’s career after leaving China and relocating to London in 1889, and in particular, his role in establishing the London School of Tropical Medicine. Haynes does not...

Imperial medicine: Patrick Manson and the conquest of tropical disease

In 1866 Patrick Manson, a young Scottish doctor fresh from medical school, left London to launch his career in China as a port surgeon for the Imperial Chinese Customs Service. For the next two decades, he served in this outpost of British power in the Far East, and extended the frontiers of British In 1899, at the twilight of his career and as the British Empire approached its zenith, he founded the London School of Tropical Medicine. For these contributions Manson would later be called the father of British tropical medicine. In Imperial Medicine: Patrick Manson and the Conquest of Tropical Disease Douglas M. Haynes uses Manson's career to explore the role of British imperialism in the making of Victorian medicine and science. He challenges the categories of home and that have long informed accounts of British medicine and science, revealing a vastly more dynamic, dialectical relationship between the imperial metropole and periphery than has previously been recognized. Manson's decision to launch his career in China was no accident; the empire provided a critical source of career opportunities for a chronically overcrowded profession in Britain. And Manson used the London media's interest in the empire to advance his scientific agenda, including the discovery of the transmission of malaria in 1898, which he portrayed as British science. The empire not only created a demand for practitioners but also enhanced the presence of British medicine throughout the world. Haynes documents how the empire subsidized research science at the London School of Tropical Medicine and elsewhere in Britain in the early twentieth century. By illuminating the historical enmeshment of Victorian medicine and science in Britain's imperial project, Imperial Medicine identifies the present-day privileged distribution of specialist knowledge about disease with the lingering consequences of European imperialism.

Charles Wilberforce Daniels, FRCP (1862–1927): underrated pioneer of tropical medicine

Charles Wilberforce Daniels was a major pioneer in the early days of the newly-formed medical specialism—tropical medicine. At the London School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) of which he was a leading stalwart, he took an active part in research, teaching and administration. But like others in the new discipline he spent a great deal of time at various tropical locations: Fiji, British Guiana—where he made important observations on various forms of filariasis, east Africa, and Malaya. However, his most important research contribution was arguably confirmation of Ronald Ross’ 1898 discovery of the complete life-cycle of avian malaria, in Calcutta.

The Albert Dock Hospital, London: the original site (in 1899) of Tropical Medicine as a new discipline

The London School of Tropical Medicine, and indeed the ‘ new’ discipline of tropical medicine, originated in 1899 at the Albert Dock Hospital — situated in London's east-end. The founder of the discipline was Patrick Manson — with a great deal of political assistance from the British Secretary of State for the Colonies (Joseph Chamberlain). The hospital (originally opened in 1890) was rebuilt in 1937–1938 and ultimately demolished in 1993.

Sir Patrick Manson. Father of tropical medicine.

Sir Patrick Manson. Illustration by Venita Jay, MD, FRCPC. I the obscurity of Amoy, South China, a lone Scotsman working with the most humble medical resources uncovered the remarkable mystery of filariasis. He not only enriched the world of medicine with numerous contributions on several tropical diseases, but also initiated a new era of thinking that winged arthropods may be associated with the spread of disease in man. In 1899, his pioneering efforts led to the establishment of a new discipline in medicine and the founding of the London School of Tropical Medicine. The lone Scotsman was Patrick Manson (1844–1922), who was born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the second in a family of 9 children. At the age of 15 years, he was apprenticed to an ironmaster’s firm in Aberdeen, but a breakdown in health prevented him from continuing this pursuit. The young Manson therefore turned to medicine at Aberdeen University, and passed his final examinations by the age of 20. By regulation, he had to be 21 years old to obtain his medical degree. Manson’s thesis on the internal carotid artery was his first paper, written while he was a medical officer at the Durham Lunatic Asylum; for this work he was awarded his MD in Aberdeen. In 1866, Manson traveled to Formosa, as medical officer to the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. Thus started a lifelong connection with the tropics and tropical diseases. After 5 years in Formosa, he was transferred to Amoy, China, where he would live for 13 years. Manson was in charge of a hospital for seamen and another missionary hospital. Practicing medicine in these areas was not easy for a Westerner at the time, but the persistent Manson slowly won the trust of the local population. Besides his busy medical practice, which included many surgical operations, Manson devoted his spare time to his passion, research on filaria. Manson’s scientific inquiries were aided only by his extraordinary will and curiosity, and his microscope. Filarial disease, which causes the disfiguring elephantiasis, was highly prevalent in Manson’s patient population in Amoy. Surgery was necessary in advanced cases, but the local population initially resisted his efforts. By an un-

‘Tropical’ cases admitted to the Albert Dock Hospital in the early years of the London School of Tropical Medicine

‘Tropical’ cases admitted to the Albert Dock Hospital in the early years of the London School of Tropical Medicine

The Second Buriti Workshop on Transfection of Parasites.

The development of new technologies for introducing exogenous DNA into parasites has allowed the study of protein function, mechanisms of gene expression and its regulation, drug resistance and designing of new potential chemotherapeutic targets. The use of these modern technologies was the main objective of the Second Buriti Workshop on Transfection of DNA into Parasites, that took place at the Laboratory for Multidisciplinary Research on Chagas Disease, Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Brasilia, from the 1st to 15 of July, 1995. The Workshop included thirteen investigators from various Brazilian and foreign research institutions, and an equal number of students that were selected from the candidate applicants from Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Goias and Pernambuco, and the Federal District.The theoretical aspects of the Workshop were introduced by Nancy R. Sturm (Department of Microbiology and Immunology, UCLA School of Medicine), who discussed the different methods of transfection along with requirements for electroporation and the various experimental conditions defined in the Workshop protocols. The speaker also discussed some peculiar biological features of kinetoplastid protozoa such as miniexon gene array, polyadenylation and codon usage, and polycistronic sequences and maturation of mRNA.John M. Kelly (London School of Tropical Medicine) reported on the vector he designed for transfection of

Doctor Patrick Manson's Leading Opposition in the Establishment of the London School of Tropical Medicine: Curnow, Anderson, and Turner

Keywords Patrick Manson, London School of Tropical Medicine, Dreadnought Hospital, Seamen's Hospital Society

George Carmichael Low FRCP: twelfth President of the Society and underrated pioneer of tropical medicine

George Carmichael Low, like so many early pioneers of Tropical Medicine, had his origin(s) in Scotland. Following a distinguished undergraduate (and early postgraduate) career, he joined Dr Patrick Manson at the newly established London School of Tropical Medicine in 1899. His first major contribution to the speciality (in 1900) was to demonstrate filariae in the proboscis sheath of mosquitoes which had been infected with Filaria bancrofti in Australia, using a technique recently learned in Heidelberg and Vienna. Shortly afterwards, he led an expedition to the Roman Campagna; this established beyond doubt mosquito-transmission of Plasmodium vivax infection to Homo sapiens. In 1901–1902, Low undertook a demanding tour of the Caribbean where he made important contributions to the understanding of the filariases, and assisted in malaria eradication. In 1902 he led a small team (the Royal Society's first sleeping sickness expedition) to investigate the ‘negro lethargy’ which had emerged in epidemic proportions on the northern shores of Lake Victoria in East Africa. This expedition narrowly failed to establish the aetiological agent ( Trypanosoma sp.) of this disease. Following his return to London, Low became superintendent of the Albert Dock Hospital and from then onwards devoted most of his career to the London School of Tropical Medicine and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases (where he became senior physician). He wrote extensively, in addition to his clinical, teaching and administrative commitments. Perhaps Low's major contribution, however, was in establishing the Society (later Royal) of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 1907, with Mr (later Sir) James Cantlie. He devoted a vast amount of time and energy to this Society, becoming the 12th President in 1929–1933. He was largely instrumental in acquiring 26 Portland Place, London (Manson House) for the Society in 1931; the newly established headquarters was officially opened by the Prince of Wales in 1932. Low was also one of the most distinguished ornithologists of his day. Although the magnitude of his contribution to tropical medicine is unquestionable, and although he did receive certain academic honours, Low did not receive a civil honour and was not accepted in the front line of pioneers of the discipline—either in his lifetime or today; the reason(s) for this remain far from clear.

Chairman's concluding remarks

Having been trained at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, I am a tropical medicine man in the tradition of Sir Patrick Manson, that is, a parasitologist. In his address inaugurating the London School of Tropical Medicine in 1899, entitled The Need for Special Training in Tropical Medicine, Manson stated that ‘the peculiar dis tribution of a large class of tropical diseases depends, in the first place, on the fact that they are entozoal diseases, in the second place, that the entozoa concerned require intermediate and definitive hosts, and, in the third, that one or other of these hosts requires a high atmospheric temperature, in other words are native to warm climates.’ He went on, ‘today the protozoan and the helminth, as regards tropical pathology, are in the ascendant.’ This belief still holds sway, as the great British and American tropical medical journals remain largely devoted to parasitic infections.

Public Health in Lagos, 1850-1900: Perceptions, Patterns, and Perspectives

attempt to make the towns and villages of West Africa healthy under the existing system is a Sisyphean task, because of no comprehensive grasp of the many-sidedness of sanitation and the relation of each to one another, no very definite object in view, no special organization for the purpose, and no continuity.l Thus wrote William John Ritchie Simpson to the secretary of state for colonies, following his extended trip to investigate sanitation in the British colonies of Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Southern Nigeria in 1908. Simpson held an M.D. and a Diploma in Public Health at the time and was a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Formerly health officer in Calcutta, he was then professor of hygiene at King's College, University of London, and lecturer in tropical hygiene at the London School of Tropical Medicine. The Colonial Office had sent one of Britain's best to look into the matter of public health in its three largest West African colonies.

Parasites and zoos

Zoos and the science of parasitology have developed and flourished together in a fruitful symbiosis. Interest in exotic animals has inevitably led to an interest in the creatures they bring with them, and zoos continue to provide a seem- ingly endless source of materials for biologists of every kind. The Zoological Society of London was founded in 1826 for 'the advance- ment of zoology and animal physiology'. It has always had veterinarians to care for the health of the a.nimals, to carry out post-mortem studies and to provide a wealth of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, helminths and arthropods for an avid circle of recipients. In 1919, Ronald Leiper of the London School of Tropical Medicine directed the Prosec- torium and 'arranged for the careful collection and study of all parasites, internal and external, by various ex- perts... The types of new species were presented to the British Museum (Nat. Hist.)' (Ref. I). For many years, blood films and faecal samples from new ar- rivals, animals in hospital and those that had died were collected every week for examination at the Wel come Bureau of Scientific Research in Euston Road. The Proceedings of the Zodogicdl Society of London contain frequent contributions from C.M. Wenyon and C.A. Hoare on protozoa, and from W.N.F. Woodland on helminths found in these specimens. The Zoo itself provided accommodation for students to collect and examine specimens of all kinds. At the turn of the century, before the formation of specialized learned so- cieties to cover the various aspects of biology, a meeting of the Zoological Society provided one of the few oppor- tunities available for the reporting and discussion of new observations and theories. A good example is the argu- ment about the taxonomy of schisto- somes. Theodore Bilharz and his arrogant successor at the Cairo laboratory, Arthur Loos, thought that the oc- casional egg they foun,d with a lateral spine was merely a variant of the normal, terminally spined egg of Schisto- soma haematobium. But clinicians such as Manson and Sambon were impressed by the differences the'/ observed be- tween patients: those with terminally spined eggs had haematuria and bladder pathology whereas the laterally spined eggs were associated with lesions of the gut. Manson suggested that 'possibly there are two species of Bilharzia' and Louis Sambon, at a meeting of the Zoological Society on 19 March, 1907 proposed that 'in appreciation of this, one of his many genial intuitions', the species with lateral spines should be dedicated to him and called S. mansoni 2. Loos pooh-poohed the idea and it was not until 1915, when war drove the Germans from Egypt, that Leiper was able to show that cercariae from the two types of egg infected two entirely different species of snail. The treatment of tropical disease has greatly benefited from the connexion between parasitologists and zoos. Organisms have been provided for the study of life cycles, immune reactions and susceptibility to chemicals, both in vitro and after transfer suitable lab- oratory animals. Captive canaries and monkeys yielded the parasites used in Germany for the discovery of the aminoquinoline antimalarials, and Plas- modium Iophurae, passaged in ducklings for screening compounds on a large scale in America, came from a fire- breasted pheasant in the New York

Serum amyloid A isotypes

Conference Article| April 01 1989 Serum amyloid A isotypes JOHN G. RAYNES; JOHN G. RAYNES 1Clinical Tropical Medicine, London School of Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London WC1E 7HT, U.K. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar KEITH P. W. J. McADAM KEITH P. W. J. McADAM 1Clinical Tropical Medicine, London School of Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London WC1E 7HT, U.K. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Biochem Soc Trans (1989) 17 (2): 345–346. https://doi.org/10.1042/bst0170345a Article history Received: June 20 1988 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Cite Icon Cite Get Permissions Citation JOHN G. RAYNES, KEITH P. W. J. McADAM; Serum amyloid A isotypes. Biochem Soc Trans 1 April 1989; 17 (2): 345–346. doi: https://doi.org/10.1042/bst0170345a Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsBiochemical Society Transactions Search Advanced Search Keywords: SAA, serum amyloid A, HDL, high-density lipoprotein, PBS, phosphate-buffered saline This content is only available as a PDF. © 1989 Biochemical Society1989 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

AIDS' Economic, Political Aspects Become as Global as Medical Problem

ALTHOUGH acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a medical problem that is finding its way into even the remotest corners of the world, its economic, political, and social ramifications are assuming their own global dimensions. That is the conclusion of many experts as the Fourth International Conference on AIDS draws to a close in Stockholm, and in the aftermath of the First International Conference on the Global Impact of AIDS held earlier this year in London. Cosponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the London gathering attracted some 1300 delegates from more than 60 countries. They represented developed and developing nations, and most participants seemed to agree that it is in the latter areas where the multifaceted dimensions of AIDS problems seem to loom most dramatically. Jonathan Mann, MD, of the WHO reported that, as of March 1, the Switzerland-based (Geneva) United

Lipids - and the company they keep.

Blood lipid measurements are of value in predicting those at risk of coronary heart disease only when they are used alongside other risk factors, according to Geoffrey Rose, Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Gait changes during rehabilitation from lower limb fractures

Dr. E.J. Imms, Dept. of Environmental Physiology (University of London), London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Keppel Street (Gower Street), London WC1E 7HT

Patrick Manson (1844-1922) and the transmission of filariasis.

Led by the eminent Raphael Blanchard, the assemblage in the Tropical Section of the 1913 International Congress of Medicine in London proclaimed Sir Patrick Manson the “Father of Tropical Medicine.” Manson (Fig. 1), then about 70 and just retired, had enjoyed full careers as physician, teacher, and researcher in China and in England, and as founder of the Hongkong Medical School, the London School of Tropical Medicine, later the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the Society of Tropical Medicine, later the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.Pride of place among Manson's many researches must go to his epochal discovery that a blood-sucking arthropod, a mosquito in this case, serves as the mandatory intermediary for a human parasite. He realized this powerful insight in 1877, not long after Pasteur's major works; thus 1977 marks the centennial of Manson's discovery which signalled the birth of tropical medicine and of medical entomology.

Manson's Tropical Diseases: A Manual of the Diseases of Warm Climates

Patrick Manson (1844-1922) began his study of tropical diseases 100 years ago, when he went to Formosa after finishing medicine at his native Aberdeen. He traveled all the tortuous paths of early malariology, made many contributions of his own, and a schistome is appropriately named for him. He was a mature 54 years of age when the first edition of his manual of tropical diseases appeared, and a year later played an important role in establishing the London School of Tropical Medicine. He was knighted not long after in recognition of his many achievements. The 16th edition of this book, for many years edited by his son-in-law, yields an astonishing accumulation of information which continues to find readers and followers, and to have withstood the raids on its markets by many other excellent texts. One of these, now fully adult in its 21 years of age, shows itself in a

Host-Parasite Relations in Some Pentastomida

Pentastomida generally considered to reach adulthood in the respiratory systems of reptiles may attain precocious development in some of these definitive hosts. Sexually mature Kiricephalus pattoni and Porocephalus crotali have been recovered from serous cavities and tissues. In tissue dwelling forms there is evidence that contacts may be maintained with the atmosphere through integumentary rents. In natural mammalian and reptilian hosts tissue dwelling pentastomes elicit little, if any, pathological tissue response, while in human tissues the response may be highly inflammatory. Studies of extensive collections of Pentastomida made by Kuntz and co-workers from Africa and Pacific islands, especially Taiwan and the Philippine Islands, are the prime bases for this work. However, we are indebted to Drs. J. C. Pearson and M. J. Mackerras, Brisbane, Australia, for tissue forms from the Australian bandicoot and to Dr. R. L. Muller, London School of Tropical Medicine, for specimens from human tissues taken at Ibadan, Nigeria. We are also indebted to the U. S. Naval Medical Research Center, Bethesda, Maryland, for photographs of certain speci-