Medical research in the Sudan since 1903.

EARLIER HISTORY OF MEDICAL RESEARCH IN THE SUDAN 1903-1948 ORGANIZED MEDICAL RESEARCH in the Sudan, which was a development of the early years of this century at a time when proper medical administration in the country was hardly in existence, owed its inception to the initiative of a great humanitarianMr. (later Sir) Henry S. Wellcome-the founder of what is known today as the Wellcome Foundation. It was against the background of the explosion of knowledge in the field of medicine in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, when the work of medical scientists such as Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur was establishing a genuinely scientific aetiological basis for disease, that Wellcome donated in 1902 the equipment of a research laboratory together with a library and museum as a generous gift to the Sudan Government. In February 1903, Dr. (later Sir) Andrew Balfour commenced work at the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories in Khartoum. Balfour was a medical pioneer in many directions and besides being the first incumbent of the post of Director to the laboratories, he also held the posts of first Medical Officer of Health to Khartoum Province and Sanitary Adviser to the Sudan Medical Department. These two additional responsibilities, as we shall see later, were bound to influence the initial direction of medical research in the Sudan. The Wellcome Laboratories, which were housed in four rooms on the second floor of the east wing of Gordon Memorial College (now the University of Khartoum), were intended to serve the following objectives:' (1) to promote technical education; (2) to promote the study of tropical disorders, especially the infective diseases of both man and beast peculiar to the Sudan, and to render assistance to the officers of health, and to the clinics of the civil and military hospitals; (3) to aid experimental investigations in poisoning cases by the detection and experimental determination of toxic agents, particularly the obscure potent substances employed by natives; (4) to carry out such chemical and bacteriological tests in connexion with water, foodstuffs, and health and sanitary matters as may be found desirable; (5) to undertake the testing and assaying of agricultural, mineral and other substances of practical interest in the industrial development of the Sudan. While these broad statements strongly suggested that general scientific research, at that time, could no more be divorced entirely from purely medical work than could routine laboratory investiga-