OBITUARY NOTICES OF DECEASED MEMBERS

George IR3arehall ginblap 6th January 1893-14th March 1952

(PLATE CXXXVII)

WITH the passing of G . M. Findlay, Britain has lost one of her most outstanding and energetic workers in the fields of virus research and tropical medicine. The son of a doctor, Findlay was educated at Dean Close School and the University of Edinburgh, but before qualifying he interrupted his studies at the outset of World War I by volunteering as a medical aid in the Belgian Army. For this he was decorated with the Mdduille du Roi Albert. He returned to take his M.B., Ch.B. with first-class honours in 1915 and later served with distinction as a Surgeon-lieutenant in the Royal Navy, being sub- sequently awarded the O.B.E.

The war over, he returned again to Edinburgh and in due course was appointed lecturer in pathology in the University and assistant pathologist to the Royal Infirmary. During his tenure of these posts he worked on the pathological and biochemical changes found in vitamin deficiency, his interest in this subject having been aroused during the war when dealing with Armenian refugees in the Middle East. His h t scientific papers, on the pigments of the adrenals and the leucocytic changes in pellagra, represented the early trickle of the spate that was to follow and to be maintained for the rest of his life.

Having obtained his M.D. with gold medal in 1920 and his D.Sc. two years later, he moved south to London to the laboratories of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. Here he made the first demonstration of the toxic action of manganese on the liver and achieved the expen- mental production of skin cancer by ultra-violet light. His interest in viruses was soon aroused and in 1926, with Ludford, he made a pictographic review of cellular inclusions. In the same year he became a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society and in 1927 editor of its Journal, a post which he held until his death. He was later, in 1950, to be elected President of this Society.

In 1929 he joined the staff of the Wellcome Bureau and it was his work here on yellow fever and its vaccine, with Hindle and others, which established his reputation. He was later to be responsible for many thousands of colonial employees being successfully vaccinated against this disease. In 1935 he was sent to the Gambia, where there was an outbreak of yellow fever, later well recorded in conjunction with Davey. For this he was promoted to C.B.E. During these yeam many papers appeared in joint authorship with MacCallum

3. PATH. BACT.-VOL. LXV (1953) 021

622 GEORGE MARSHALL FINDLAY

and received world-wide recognition. Other collaborators a t this time were Stefanopoulo, Mackenzie, Stern and Clarke, and amongst the many papers published were those on Rift Valley fever with Broom, Mackenzie and Stern, and on jaundice with Dunlop. During this period, also, the first and bulky edition of his Recent advances in chemotherapy appeared. He was also a member of the Foot and Mouth Disease Research Committee.

In World War 11, the problem of yellow fever removed him from the obscurity of the Home Guard at Radlett when he was flown to the Sudan to investigate an outbreak which was threatening to interfere with the East African campaign. He combined this with a visit to Abyssinia and he also went to Tunis to advise on trench fever. In January 1943 he was appointed consulting physician to the West African Command with the rank of brigadier. There then followed four of what must have been his happiest professional years. The normal tour of duty was eighteen months and he did three of them.

Living a t G.H.Q. at Achimota College, his true headquarters were at the 37th General Hospital, Accra, where he created his own research laboratory and attracted to him, in an atmosphere entirely free from military convention, a band of enthusiastic and happy workers, made enthusiastic and happy by his own example and t h e confidence he placed in them. His whole life a t this time was geared to his work, which to him was also his relaxation. His remarkable literary output was as always related on the one hand to his extra- ordinary powers of organisation and on the other to the hours he put in, which were virtually all of his waking ones.

He toured t'he Command widely and also visited India. Wherever he went, even in the most remote spots, he would find a kindred soul-whether lieutenant-colonel or lieutenant-who was soon happily engaged in collecting some sort of medical, zoological, botanical or cultural information for him. His visits would bring joy to many a lonely medical officer, as his obvious interest in medical rather than administrative military matters was like a refreshing breeze in the torpor which was prone to develop in isolated establishments in this humid area. It kindled an enthusiasm for which many have remained grateful.

His work in West Africa is well documented, for Findlay believed in recording the results of his labours (during his life he wrote wel! over 200 papers), although by the time they appeared in print the subjects were often for the time-being forgotten, as he had become engaged on something else.

First with Maegraith, then with Markson, Holden, Stevenson and others, he completed a number of authoritative papers on malaria and blackwater fever. He showed that mepacrine was more effective than quinine in its prevention, and that some effect in treatment was obtained with the sulphonamides. The substitution of mepacrine for

J. PATH. BACT.-VOL. LXV PLATE CXXXVII

Portrait by Bamano

OBITUARY 623

quinine for routine prophylaxis practically abolished blackwater fever from the Command.

I n 1937, with MacCallum, he had noted that jaundice not due to yellow fever sometimes followed the use of the vaccine. This syringe- transmitted jaundice later became a considerable problem when there was a large outbreak following yellow-fever vaccination amongst United States troops in the Middle East, as well as in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, during the course of the arsenical treatment of syphilis. With Martin he successfully showed its infectious nature by transmitting the virus by nasal instillation of infected serum in human volunteers. With Willcox he then turned to the virus of infective hepatitis, and volunteers from the venereal diseases department were given faeces and urine from infective hepatitis patients, orally, in milk, and some developed jaundice. This, and other similar work on the faeces by MacCallum and others, did much to place the responsibility for infective hepatitis on the hygiene departments.

He also established a team of Africans to survey trypanosomiasis, mobile teams for the treatment of blackwater fever, training courses for technicians (many of whom were later to be absorbed into the Colonial Medical Service), and a pathological reference centre. Follow- ing the death of an officer from poliomyelitis he established a strain of the virus in monkeys for the first time in West Africa. With Robertson he undertook several investigations into sickle-cell anaemia, including experiments with McGibbon and Boulter in which a number of apprehensive Africans were flown at a high altitude in a Dakota while blood tests were made. With Hill and MacPherson he was the first to publish on the effectiveness of penicillin in yaws, and a miniature mass-treatment programme was conducted amongst the inmates of two villages adjacent to the hospital. The early cases were treated with a penicillin of his own manufacture. The writer used some of this in gonorrhea but without success. It is now known that, surprisingly, a lower serum level of penicillin is required in yaws than in a gonorrheal infection.

He effectively took charge of the medical scene in Nigeria in 1944 when, immediately prior to embarking for Burma, a brigade of the 82nd West African Division was found to be heavily infected with schistosomiasis following aquatic exercises in a lagoon near Lagos. By mobilising a number of persons used to giving injections in bulk, many of whom were mustered from venereal diseases clinics in the other Colonies, by cutting all red tape and with much improvisation, he treated all the Europeans with Stibophen flown from England and the Africans with tartar emetic, and the brigade sailed only one week late. There were relapses later, however.

In 1945 there was an outbreak of typhus amongst the civilian population of Jos in Northern Nigeria, to which he was called in. The writer had the good fortune to be almost his daily companion during both these events and can testify to his remarkable energy,

624 GEORGE MARSHALL FINDLAY

his wide knowledge of many subjects and his enviable ability to bring about constructive relaxation by turning to work of another kind. Journeys would be halted en route at a native market, for a tramp along some muddy stream looking for snails, for a visit to a hospital or mission to collect data or microscopical slides, or to meet some humble African who had been collecting monkey skins. The Africans loved him and he sometimes spent week-ends with the African doctors. His laboratory trainees who had gone to Burma were his regular correspondents and there was never any shortage of African volunteers for his experiments. Before leaving West Africa he wrote to the many doctors with whom he had been associated thanking them for making his life there more interesting. He came home by cargo boat in order that he could bring his monkeys with him. These he presented to the Zoological Society of London, of which he was a Fellow. He had already sent a number of skins to the British Museum. Somehow, too, he managed to bring back a River-jack viper, which also went to the Zoo.

Like many others, he felt somewhat frustrated on returning to civilian life, his already wide outlook having been widened even more. In 1947 he took a step which occasioned some surprise to those who knew him, and left the Wellcome Bureau to become editor of dbstracts of World Medicine and Abstracts of World Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology for the British Medical Association. He soon established these journals on a broad international foundation, using many of his West African colleagues as abstractors in the early issues.

It was felt that this task would be irksome to him but, character- istically, he turned it to good account by adding the enormous volume of references now flowing through his hands to the third edition of his Recent advances in chemotherapy, the second of which had appeared in 1929. At the time of his death two volumes, each larger than the first edition of the entire work, had been published and had received their rightful mead of praise from the critics. A third was nearly finished and a fourth was planned. It is sincerely to be hoped that these will be completed. Also unfinished was a book on indigenous African medicine. In 1948 he was elected F.R.C.P. London.

His real love, however, was research, and through the courtesy of Prof. (2. Buttle and the help of certain grants he was able to establish himself in a laboratory at the School of Pharmacy in Bloomsbury Square. Here, with the help of his technician, Miss E. M. Howard, he was able to continue his investigations during the lunch hour and again after tea. His studies concerned particularly poliomyelitis, Coxsackie virus and Rift Valley fever. By means of a remote partner- ship with Ampofo in the Gold Coast he investigated the effects of the oral antibiotics on yaws and tropical ulcer. With Willcox, too, he studied the effects of these drugs in non-specific urethritis.

Towards the end he seemed to be in danger of being overwhelmed by the machine of his own making, although to the casual observer

OBITUARY 625

he did not show it. He seldom refused an invitation to speak, write or review a book, and he always had time to spare to give advice when sought and to talk on medical matters. Meanwhile the piles of manuscripts about him rose higher and higher. Much of his proof reading must have been done in the train between London and Radlett. His death came suddenly from coronary thrombosis soon after leaving his house for the station. He is mourned by a widow and two daughters.

Findlay’s achievements were many and will not soon be forgotten. Perhaps his greatest was his ability to inspire enthusiasm in others, to indicate new and exciting paths ahead and how to experience the pleasure of the journey for its own sake whatever the destination. He taught how to recognise an opportunity and how to take it when offered and that failure in an endeavour was better than an endeavour stillborn because of fear of that failure. There are many, therefore, who ha\-e experienced a keen personal loss in his passing.

Microscopical Society, 1952, vol. lxvii, pp. 129-136. A bibliography of 216 references will be found in the Journal of the Royal

R. R. WILLCOX.

meter Ziubeap 5iutberlanD 4th May 1880--27th October 1951

(PLATE CXXXVIII)

PETER SUTHERLAND, a member of our Society since 1910, was born in Glasgow and educated at N a n Glen’s School and Glasgow University. Allan Glen’s was one of the first schools in Scotland to initiate practical classes in physics and chemistry, a fact which probably accounts for the large number of recruits it provided for the faculties of medicine and engineering.

Entering the University in 1898, Sutherland had a most distinguished academic career, graduating with honours (i.e. of the first, class) in 1903. Two years later he proceeded to the newly- instituted degree of B.Sc. in Public Health and in 1915 to the D.Sc. From 1905 until 1908 he was resident medical officer, first in Barnhill Hospital and then in Knightswood Fever Hospital, Glasgow, where he had experience of the big epidemic of meningococcal meningitis then aBcting tha$ city. From 1908 to 1910 he was assistant bacteriologist in the City of Glasgow Bacteriological Laboratory under the late Dr R. M. Buchanan, one of the pioneer city bacteriologists of this country.

In 1910 he moved to Wakefield on appointment as bacteriologist to the West Riding, a post which he was to occupy with great distinction for the next 36 years. He had not been long in Yorkshire, however,