Alexander Edington

Prof Alexander Edington MD CM FRSE (1860-1928) was a Scots-born bacteriologist and medical author strongly associated with South Africa. He made an important study of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.

Life

He was born in Edinburgh in 1860 and educated at George Watsons College before studying Medicine at Edinburgh University.

In the 1880s he became Assistant Surgeon to Prof John Chiene and was then appointed Professor of Comparative Pathology at the Veterinary College in Edinburgh.

In 1890 he is listed as living at 44 Great King Street in Edinburgh’s Second New Town.[1]

In 1891 he took a job as Colonial Bacteriologist and sailed to South Africa. This role appears to have been to gather data on the Rinderpest pandemic of 1890 onwards.[2] Edington’s conclusion of his studies was to add glycerine to the animal bile, which had an immunisation effect. From 1894 he served as Principal Medical Officer to the Cape Government.[3] In 1893 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Alexander Crum Brown, John Chiene, Leonard Dobbin and Hugh Marshall.[4] He was President of the first Medical Congress in South Africa and editor of the South African Medical Journal.

In both Boer Wars he both raised and served in the Ambulance Corps based at Grahamstown. He served with distinction in the First World War acting as Officer Commanding of the South Africa Military Hospital and Senior Medical Officer at Dar-es-Salaam. His official rank was Lt Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps. In the 1920s he was Medical Superintendent to Gray’s Hospital in Pietermaritzburg before going into private practice in Greytown. .[5]

He died aged 68 in Greytown, KwaZulu-Natal on 16 July 1928 following a short illness.[6]

Publications

References

  1. ↑ Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory 1890-91
  2. ↑ A History of Medicine in South Africa, Edmund Burrows, 1958
  3. ↑ Cambridge Journals 1928: obituary Alexander Edington
  4. ↑ BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX OF FORMER FELLOWS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 1783 – 2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0 902 198 84 X.
  5. ↑ Cambridge Journals 1928: obituary Alexander Edington
  6. ↑ Natal Witness (newspaper), 20 July 1928
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