HEALTH AND MEDICINE — GENERAL 469 



medicine, the holders of which will work partly in the tropics and 

 partly in British institutions to which they will be attached. The 

 first stage in this programme has been the creation of fellowships 

 for tropical research, of which two junior and two senior have 

 already been awarded in 1938. This enlargement of the GounciPs 

 work has followed on the establishment of the Tropical Medical 

 Research Committee [see below). 



The Colonial Office, where Dr. A. J. R. O'Brien is Chief Medical 

 Adviser, has a great interest in colonial medical developments. 

 The Colonial Advisory Medical Committee keeps in close touch 

 with the individual services by the examination of annual medical 

 reports, by interviewing officers on leave, and in other ways. In 

 1934 the Colonial Medical Service was constituted as a unified 

 service, a change which, among other advantages, has rendered the 

 transfer of officers from one dependency to another easier and more 

 frequent (Colonial Office 1936a). Special advisory committees on 

 specific problems are set up by the Colonial Office; for example, 

 a Colonial Nutrition Committee was appointed in 1936, which 

 includes representatives of many interested bodies in Great Britain, 

 and a general inquiry into available information on food supplies 

 and native diets in the dependencies was set on foot (Colonial 

 Office 1936b). 



The Tropical Medical Research Committee, established in 1936, 

 was formed as an advisory body, including representatives of 

 the Medical Research Council, Colonial Office, and the Liver- 

 pool and London Schools of Tropical Medicine, to institute a 

 wider programme of research in the tropics. A similar organiza- 

 tion, the Colonial Medical Research Committee, was established 

 in 1927, but it proved inconvenient from the administrative point 

 of view and was dissolved at the end of 1930, and its functions 

 merged in the Colonial Advisory Medical Committee. 



Medical Missions are organized by nearly every branch of the 

 Christian Church and have contributed greatly to the improve- 

 ment of the general health in many parts of Africa. There is a 

 British Advisory Board on medical missions in London. The staff 

 of these missions are men and women of immense energy, skill, and 

 resource; some have built up well-equipped hospitals, and others 

 have concentrated on the preventive and educational side of 



