Sir Arthur Macnalty, 1880–1969

Purkyn6's contribution to physiology. Relations of structure and function. Rise of experimental physiology and beginnings of physiological institutes. Further evolution of topics studied by Purkyne up to recent times. It is with great regret that we record the death of Sir Arthur MacNalty, at the age of 88, on 17 April 1969. Sir Arthur was for some years a member of this journal's Editorial Board and his wise counsel and generous appreciation was always a great support to its editor. His distinguished career as physician and public health worker has already been the subject of many obituary notices. When he retired from his post as chief medical officer to the Ministry of Health and Board of Education in 1941, on reaching the age limit, he embarked on a second career as a medical historian, being appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Official Medical History of the War under an editorial board of which R. A. Butler was the first chairman. His own important role in the planning of the emergency medical services made him an obvious choice for this heavy task, but few could have foreseen that the iron will and determination which was masked by his frail form and modest demeanour could enable him to see its completion, still under his personal direction, as a monumental work in twenty volumes, to which his own contributions were not the least important. This alone would justify the wholetime career of most men, but simultaneously MacNalty continued to cultivate his earlier love of the literature and biography of the Tudor period which bore fruit in a number of attractive monographs of which his Henry VIII, a Difficult Patient (1952) and Elizabeth Tudor, the Lonely Queen (1954) are the best known. His Fitzpatrick lectures on the history of state medicine in England were a notable contribution to a subject in which he himself made history, and his many other lectures and papers were remarkable for the depth of scholarship and historical appreciation which they revealed. His familiar figure will be greatly missed at our meetings which he attended so loyally, but his achievements remain a shining example of what can be done by those who look upon retirement not as an end but as a beginning.