Robert Moffat and the beginnings of the government medical service in Uganda.

ROBERT UNWIN MOFFAT was born at the London Missionary Society's station at Kuruman, South Africa, in 1866. His father was a missionary and the son of Robert Moffat (1795-1883), the pioneer missionary of that area, who had gone out to South Africa in 1816 and had founded the station at Kuruman in 1825. It was Robert Moffat who was responsible for bringing David Livingstone to Africa, and Livingstone married Moffat's daughter, Mary. Thus the subject of this article was the nephew, by marriage, of the great explorer. Robert Unwin Moffat was brought up and educated in South Africa until the age of twenty when, with the aid of a loan from some family friends, he went to Edinburgh to study medicine. Immediately after qualification he obtained an appointment as medical officer to the company projecting to build a railway from the coast at Mombasa to Uganda, 800 miles inland, and, on 29 March 1891, landed at Mombasa. From that time until he finally quit East Africa, over fifteen years later, Moffat wrote regular letters to his family in South Africa and these letters are preserved in the library of Makerere University College.' They are of great interest and provide much material for the history of European medicine in East Africa from its earliest days. This account is largely based upon this collection of letters. Moffat's personality and career are themselves of interest, apart from a strictly medical point of view, and his letters build up a fascinating picture of European life in the very earliest days of the British Protectorate. Moffat's first post was that of medical eifficer at a place called Railway Point, close to Mombasa. This he found an uncongenial station. The place itself was an untidy conglomeration of huts and railway equipment and all the trees in the vicinity had been cut down. Moffat himself was housed in an 'iron shanty' with a palm leaf roof which harboured a variety of animal life, including a large snake. The hospital at Railway Point, like most of the other buildings, was an 'iron-shed'. Moffat's day began with a visit to the hospital at 6 a.m. At 7.30 a.m. he returned home for breakfast and thereafter might find other work in the hospital until 10 a.m. Throughout the heat of the day the hospital was closed, until 5 p.m., except for emergency work. The day's work finished with a further short visit to the hospital and he was home for dinner at 6 p.m. As he only saw about forty new patients a week he had not nearly enough to do and described his existence as 'a very strange quiet life'. Not unnaturally, he was soon bored so that he recorded his first attack of fever as 'an acceptable change'. There were few diversions; he did not get on with such young men as there were in the district who led a wild, drunken life. Nor did he admire the company doctor, Dr. MacDonald, in Mombasa, although admitting that he was 'hearty and kind'. The only other society that he might have cultivated was that of the missionaries who ran establishments in which they cared for liberated slaves in the area.