Patrick Manson

British physician (1844–1922)

Manson was the son of a local laird and farmer in Oldmeldrum, Scotland. He studied medicine at Aberdeen University, obtaining his MD in 1866. He then became a medical officer, firstly in Formosa (1866–71) and then for a further 13 years in Amoy. Manson completed his 23 years' service in the Far East by running a profitable private practice in Hong Kong until 1889. Back in Britain he set up as a consultant in London, served as medical adviser to the Colonial Office from 1897 to 1912, and was the prime mover in the foundation of the London School of Tropical Medicine in 1899. In 1914 Manson finally retired to Ireland, where he spent his last years fishing on Lough Mask in Galway.

Manson was an original and creative scientist. His greatest achievement was to demonstrate conclusively what had long been suspected, namely, that certain diseases are transmitted by insects. His first success, in 1877, was to link the mosquito Culex fatigans with the presence of the parasite Filaria sanguinis hominis (FSH) in many of his patients suffering from elephantiasis. Full details of the life cycle of the FSH were published later in 1884. The clinical effects of the parasites, which eventually obstruct the lymphatic system, he published in his monograph, The Filaria sanguinis hominis, and Certain New Forms of Parasitic Disease (1883).

With this success behind him Manson was able to throw considerable light on a wide range of further tropical diseases. He thus made numerous suggestions on the mode of transmission of such widespread diseases as sleeping sickness and bilharzia. He also played a crucial role in the working out of the etiology and spread of the biggest killer of all, malaria. It was Manson who suggested to Ronald Ross in 1894 that mosquitoes carry malaria, who guided Ross throughout his research, and who, in 1900, performed one of the crucial experiments confirming his earlier hypothesis.

Manson used mosquitoes of the species Anopheles maculipennis, which were sent him by Giovanni Grassi from Rome, and allowed them to feed on his son Patrick Manson, then a medical student at Guy's Hospital, London. Within 15 days his son had developed malaria and parasites were clearly visible in his blood.

For such work Manson was elected to the Royal Society in 1900 and knighted in 1903. But although Ross was awarded the 1902 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his work on malaria, Manson was surprisingly ignored.

Patrick Manson (1844–1922), the man identified as the "father of tropical medicine," was an Aberdonian Scot who studied medicine in his home city of Aberdeen and in Edinburgh. Following his graduation in 1865, he went straight into the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, first in Formosa and later in Amoy. His work in China covered a remarkable range and included many original discoveries about the causes and suitable control measures for some of the tropical diseases that were so common at that time. This included work on several intestinal parasites; skin diseases caused by fungus infections; and tropical sprue, a debilitating bowel disease that causes or is associated with vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

In 1877, Manson discovered that the crippling disease known as elephantiasis was caused by a filarial worm and transmitted by mosquitoes—the first demonstration that mosquitoes transmitted diseases. After returning to Britain in 1890 he established a consultant medical practice in London and became a medical teacher and adviser to the British Colonial Office. His work included the reorganization of the West African medical services. In 1898 he published a seminal work, Tropical Diseases, and in 1899 he founded the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Previously, he had founded a school of tropical medicine in Hong Kong.

Manson influenced a whole generation of British medical scientists who studied and specialized in tropical diseases. The greatest of these was Ronald Ross, to whom he passed on his hypothesis that mosquitoes must be the vector that transmitted malaria. Manson's name is immortalized several times in the taxonomy of the pathogens he identified. He received many honors and awards, including a knighthood.

(SEE ALSO: Tropical Infectious Diseases; Vector-Borne Diseases)

— JOHN M. LAST

Sir Patrick Manson
Sir Patrick Manson
Born	1844 Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Died	1922 London, England
Residence	Hong Kong Amoy London
Nationality	Scottish
Fields	Parasitology
Institutions	Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese Albert Dock Seamen's Hospital London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Alma mater	University of Aberdeen
Known for	Founding the discipline of Tropical medicine

Sir Patrick Manson (3 October 1844 in Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire - 9 April 1922 in London) was a Scottish physician who made important discoveries in parasitology and was the founder of the tropical medicine field.

He was the second son of John Manson and Elizabeth née Blakie. He obtained the Bachelor of Medicine at the University of Aberdeen in 1865, his Master of Surgery in 1866 and his Medical Doctorate and Doctor of Law in 1866.

Birthplace of Sir Patrick Manson

Manson traveled to Formosa (Taiwan) in 1866 as a medical officer to the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, where he started a lifelong career in the research of tropical medicine. After 5 years in Formosa (Taiwan), he transferred to Amoy, on the Chinese coast where he worked for another 13 years. Between 1883 and 1889 he practised medicine Hong Kong.

He spent his early years researching Filaria (a small worm that causes elephantiasis). Manson focused his time on searching for Filaria in blood taken from his patients. From this he began to work out the life cycle of Filaria and through painstaking observation discovered that the worms were only present in the blood during the night and were absent during the day. He used to conduct experiments on his gardener, Hin Lo, who was infected with the Filaria. He would get mosquitoes to feed off his blood while he slept and then dissect the mosquitoes filled with Hin Lo's blood. “I shall not easily forget the first mosquito I dissected. I tore off its abdomen and succeeded in expressing the blood the stomach contained. Placing this under the microscope, I was gratified to find that, so far from killing the Filaria, the digestive juices of the mosquito seemed to have stimulated it to fresh activity.” Manson observed that the Filaria only developed as far as an embryo within the human blood and that the mosquito must have a role in the life cycle of the Filaria. Through these early experiments he started to hypothesise about the role of mosquitoes and the spread of disease. Out of this arose the mosquito-malaria theory, which suggested that agent that causes malaria was also spread by a mosquito. This discovery was one of the most important medical breakthroughs of the time. Under the constant supervision of Manson, Sir Ronald Ross described the full life cycle of the plasmodium inside the female mosquito. Manson's theory was finally proved by Ross in 1898, who later won the Nobel Prize in 1902 for this discovery. Manson also demonstrated a new species of Schistosoma (Bilharzia) known as Schistosoma mansoni.

He was the first to import cows from his native Scotland to Hong Kong and thus establish a dairy farm in Pok Fu Lam in 1885 and the company Dairy Farm in Hong Kong. He was the founder of the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, where Sun Yat-sen was one of his first pupils. In 1896, through his contacts at the Foreign Office, Manson managed to secure the release of Sen after he had been kidnapped in London by Chinese officials. Sen went onto become the first President of the Republic of China. In 1911 Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese became the University of Hong Kong. He returned to London in 1889 and in 1897 Manson was appointed as Chief Medical Officer to the Colonial Office. It was here that he used his influence to push for the foundation of a School of Tropical Medicine at the Albert Dock Seamen's Hospital. The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine was opened on 2nd October 1899. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1900, knighted in 1903 and in the following year awarded an honorary Doctorate of Science by the University of Oxford. He became the first president of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine in 1907. He retired from the colonial office in 1912.

Manson teaching at the Albert Dock Seamen's Hospital 1901

Manson married in 1876 to Henrietta Isabella Thurbun, with whom he had three sons and one daughter. His daughter married Philip Heinrich Bahr, one of Manson's pupils at the London School of Tropical medicine. Sir Philip Manson-Bahr CMG DSO MD FRCP (Lond) became a leader in the field of tropical medicine in his own right. In 1995 Manson's grandson, Dr Clinton Manson-Bahr won the Manson medal which is awarded triennially. It is the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine's highest mark of distinction for contributions to tropical medicine.

Publications

• Manson's Tropical Diseases : a Manual of the Diseases of Warm Climates (1898);
• Lectures on Tropical Diseases (1905);
• Diet in the Diseases of Hot Climates (1908), with Charles Wilberforce Daniels (1862-1927).

External links

• Royal Society citation

• Dairy Farm Group

• University of Hong Kong Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine

• Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

• Wellcome Trust Images

• Wellcome Trust Library

Persondata
NAME	Manson, Patrick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Scottish parasitologist
DATE OF BIRTH	1844
PLACE OF BIRTH	Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
DATE OF DEATH	1922
PLACE OF DEATH	London, England

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