468 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



are published. From 1931 onwards a valuable Supplement to the 

 Tropical Diseases Bulletin has been published, consisting of summaries 

 by Dr. Scott of the medical and sanitary reports from British 

 colonies, protectorates, and dependencies. The bureau is under 

 the general control of an honorary managing committee ap- 

 pointed by and responsible to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. 

 The other sources of information are the Imperial Bureau of Agricul- 

 tural Parasitology {see Chapter XI), which abstracts the literature 

 on medical parasitology, and the Bureau of Nutrition at the Rowett 

 Institute, Aberdeen. 



The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine is another important 

 headquarters of training and research, especially in relation to the 

 West African colonies. This school has sent many expeditions to 

 Africa, and it maintains and staffs the Sir Alfred Jones Laboratory 

 at Freetown, Sierra Leone, an independent institution, the Direc- 

 tor of which is consulting pathologist to the Government. It has 

 a European staff of two, occasionally increased to three or four, 

 who have set out to make a survey of several of the main diseases 

 and parasites of equatorial West Africa as a whole. Visiting research 

 workers often use the Sir Alfred Jones Laboratory as an head- 

 quarters; for example, Mr. Davis, formerly attached to the Bureau 

 of Animal Populations at Oxford, recently conducted a census in 

 Freetown of rats and their parasites in relation to plague and 

 tropical typhus. 



The Medical Research Council, with an allocation of government 

 funds, finances or assists numerous researches in Great Britain. 

 Among those which have bearing on African development are the 

 following: the Experimental Malaria Unit under Sir Rickard 

 Christophers, maintained at the London School of Hygiene and 

 Tropical Medicine for the study of antimalarial drugs; work of a 

 similar nature at the Molteno Institute at Cambridge; two research 

 fellowships in tuberculosis have been devoted to work in Eastern 

 Africa; and an inquiry into the nutritional problems of Nigeria 

 has been assisted by the Council. As announced in their recent 

 report for 1935-6 (1937) the Council, finding themselves in a better 

 position than formerly to fulfil their responsibilities of research 

 into problems of health and disease in tropical conditions, intend 

 eventually to establish permanent posts for research into tropical 



