Diary: Gambia malaria expedition.

Dutton, Joseph Everett: Peculiar and ordinary events of the day on my journey to, and stay in the Gambia, West Africa. Author's holograph MS. Lettered on the spine `Dutton's Diary. Gambian malarial Expedition.' Illustrated with a few rough pen and pencil drawings. Signed by the author below the title. The diary is very fragmentary, beginning on 21 September and extending to 19 October (18 ll.). After four blank leaves, there are 2 pages of a `Journey with Lieut. Tracy (i.e. George Courtenay Tracy, afterwards Lieut. Col. D.S.O., [1876-1951]), dated 6th and 7th December. Following further blank leaves there is a list headed `Things wanted for Expedition to Senegal and Gambia (18 ll.), and 10 ll. inserted loose, written partly in pencil at Baia `a small Mandingo town, about 2 miles from the river [Gambia] in the interior'. This MS. is a partial account of the Sixth Expedition sent out by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine under Dr. Joseph Everett Dutton, M.D., C.M. of Victoria University, Liverpool. He had already been a Member of the Third (Malarial) Expedition to Nigeria in 1900, and was afterwards leader of the Tenth (Trypanosomiasis) Expedition to the Gambia and French Senegal in 1902, and of the Twelfth (Trypanosomiasis) Expedition to the Congo Free State in 1904, 1905. In the last expedition he was accompanied by Dr. John Lancelot Todd [1876-1949] and Dr. Cuthbert Christy [1863-1932]. Dr. Todd had also been with him on the Tenth Expedition. Though in this and the following MS. the Expedition is described by Dutton as the `Gambia Malarial Expedition', it is called 'The Sixth (Trypanosomiasis) Expedition' in the `Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Historical Record 1898-1920', p. 73. In this book, under the date 1902 (p. 25) is an entry: `a telegram had been received from Dr. Dutton stating that he had made an important medical discovery, viz: the identification for the first time of a trypanosome in the blood of man. This parasite was subsequently shewn to be the cause of sleeping sickness and is now known as Trypanosoma gambiense, Dutton, 1902'. At Stanley Falls in 1904 he independently discovered the cause of `Tick Fever' in man. He had contracted Spirillum Fever, as also had Dr. Todd: but whereas the latter recovered, Dutton himself died of the disease at Kosongo on 27 February, 1905. In this further discovery he had been anticipated a few weeks previously by [Sir] Ronald Ross [1857-1932] and [Arthur Dawson] Milne [1867-1932] in Uganda [op. cit., p. 33]. Dr. J. L. Todd was the owner of the 42 MSS. relating to researches on trypanosomiasis, tick fever, and other African tropical diseases, etc., of which this is the earliest volume.

1901

18 ll. (first bl.). + 4 bl. ll. + 3 ll. + 48 bl. ll. + 18 ll. + 43 bl. ll. + 10 ll. (inserted). 4to. 221/2 x 18 cm. Written in a cloth-bound ruled note-book.

Presented by the daughter of John Lancelot Todd, Mrs. Bridget Todd Fialkowski, in 1967

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).