Tropical Medicine in the Twentieth Century

First published in 1998. Despite the upsurge of interest in the history of tropical medicine, international public health and the provision of health care in colonial and post-colonial tropical countries, no major text discusses the history of the academic discipline in the twentieth century. In Britain, the two Schools of Tropical Medicine opened within six months of each other in the final year of the nineteenth century. They have played a pivotal role in developing tropical medicine, as an academic discipline in postgraduate medicine with an active research profile. The Schools also affected the development of health care in the tropical colonies. They trained the Medical Officers of the Colonial Medical Service and the indigenous doctors whose training failed to include infectious endemic diseases and lacked an emphasis on community health. The Schools also contributed to a body of knowledge applied by the colonial powers, international agencies and independent nation states as part of their health care programmes. Ultimately the Schools helped the developing world to establish its own priorities for health. This volume charts the history of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine from1898 to1990.