You LVII., No. 8. 75 
T. L. BANCROFT MEMORIAL LECTURE. 
Thomas Lane Bancroft, Pharmacologist. , 
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By H. J. G. Hines, B.Sc., Department of Physiology, 
University of Queensland. 
{Delivered before the Royal Society of Queensland, 2 6th November, 
1945; issued separately * 20 th January, 1947.) 
Last year your Council invited Mr. C. T. White to deliver a 
memorial address on the life and work of Mr. Henry Try on. The present 
Council decided that a memorial address might well he a recurring 
feature of the Society’s programme, and as a result I am to speak to you 
to-night on certain aspects of the work of one of our former 
distinguished life-members. Dr. T. L. Bancroft. 
Thomas Lane Bancroft died on 12th November, 1933 ; as is 
customary, his death was noted by our then President previous to his 
presidential address of the following year, but nothing was said of his 
work. However, an adequate notice of his life appeared in the Medical 
Journal of Australia for April, 1934. It is not my purpose to-night to 
attempt anything approaching a full biographical memoir. Had I been 
qualified to do so I could have spoken of Bancroft ’s work as an 
entomologist, as a parasitologist, or in reference to public health. In all 
of these branches of science he made considerable contributions to our 
knowledge, and we cannot in these days of specialism fail to be 
impressed with his versatility. 
T. L. Bancroft was fortunate in his early upbringing. The scientific 
prowess of his father, Joseph Bancroft, is well known; his discoveries 
are now classics and his name is commemorated in Brisbane annually by 
a memorial lecture delivered under a foundation of the British Medical 
Association. Joseph Bancroft himself had made some notable pharmaco- 
logical discoveries, which are recorded in the earliest numbers of our 
Proceedings. These deal with the active constituent of pituri and with 
the mydriatic properties of Duboisia myoporoides. This latter plant has 
proved to be of outstanding importance. Hyoscine is the most efficacious 
prophylactic known against sea- and air-sickness; and the safe landing 
in fit condition of thousands of troops in sea- and airborne invasions has 
been made possible through the extensive use of this drug, which has 
been practically all supplied from the eastern coastal districts of Aus- 
tralia. As a boy, T. L. Bancroft must have assisted his father in these 
botanical and pharmacological investigations, and it is not surprising 
that, when his turn came to take up the study of medicine at Edinburgh, 
the home of so many great naturalists, he should have won the bronze 
medal for botany. 
Bancroft returned to Queensland in 1885 and, from then until the 
time of his marriage ten years later, he w r as actively interested in the 
pharmacology of the local fiora. A short period of residence at Christ- 
church gave him the opportunity to become acquainted with the New 
Zealand fiora and to test the properties of some of its species. He 
published the results of his enquiries in a series of short papers which 
appeared for the most part in our Proceedings but also in those of the 
K 
