Hackett, Cecil John

The following is an interim description which may change when detailed cataloguing takes place.

Lantern slides, x-rays and photographs relating to research on "boomerang leg" among indigenous Australians, 1936; papers relating to work on Yaws in the Lango district of Uganda, 1937-1938, including case notes, x-rays, photographs, films, reports, and notes; a small amount of material relating to work as the Director of the Wellcome Museum of Medical Science, 1945-1954, including photographs and notes; clinical and pathological photographs relating to syphilis, yaws and related conditions, 1930s-1950s; papers relating to a study group for the nomenclature of yaws lesions, c. 1955; papers as Medical Officer, Venereal Diseases and Treponematoses Section, World Health Organisation, 1950s, including material relating to yaws mass eradication campaigns; correspondence with colleagues on yaws and related topics, c. 1963-1980; papers relating to later publications, 1980s.

1930s-1980s

Uncatalogued: 28 transfer boxes and 1 file 2 Archive boxes

These papers were donated to the library at Wellcome Collection and the Wellcome Tropical Institute by Dr Hackett between 1980 and 1992.

Hackett was born in Australia in 1905. He studied medicine at Adelaide University and then at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He had a varied career, with a particular long-standing interest in yaws. After the Second World War he became Director of the Wellcome Museum of Medical Science. In 1954 Hackett joined the World Health Organisation (WHO) and was involved in its yaws eradication programme. He retired in 1965 and subsequently concentrated his interest on the anthropological and historical contexts of yaws.

A fuller biographical history is available in Lives of the fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of London.

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