948 10 April 1965 Liverpool ' s Contribution to Medicine

In the 1920s Warrington Yorke had pioneered the malarial treatment of G.P.I. and neurosyphilis. It was Warrington Yorke who foresaw the dangers of Japanese intervention in the last war, and the overrunning of Java, the major source of the world's supply of quinine. It was his enthusiasm and energy which led the Governments of the U.K. and U.S.A. to provide mepacrine, which had been developed as an antimalarial drug in the inter-war period, so that by 1942 there were adequate supplies to forestall disaster. Warrington Yorke played an important part in the testing of Paludrine, and it was his method of maintaining trypanosomes alive in culture which led the way to the treatment of sleeping sickness and kala-azar with the diamidine group of compounds. Indeed, Wenyon, in the obituary notice on Yorke written for the Royal Society, observed: "He had been instrumental in introducing for the treatment of two of the most intractable tropical diseases remedies which will lead to the saving of many human lives."