This timeline highlights our School's history and major contributions to health over 120 years, from first making the link between smoking and lung cancer, to recent work on Ebola vaccines.
The Seaman's Hospital Society was founded in 1821 ‘for the purpose of establishing, by public voluntary subscriptions, a floating hospital, for the assistance and relief of sick and helpless seamen’. Patients were treated on ships moored on the River Thames, including HMS Dreadnought which had fought in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The patients were moved to dry land in 1870, to part of the Greenwich hospital, and in 1890 the Society opened a branch hospital at the Albert Dock. Photo: The Seamen's Hospital Society and London School of Tropical Medicine building, c.1899 from LSHTM Archives Service.
Sir Patrick Manson was a physician who had worked in the Far East in the 1860s to the 1880s when he became frustrated at his lack of knowledge of tropical diseases. He returned to London in 1889 and back into practice as his comfortable retirement fortune was decimated by a sharp fall in the value of the Chinese dollar. His work with seamen suffering from tropical diseases helped to develop his argument that training in this area was required. Photo: LSHTM Archives Service.
Secretary of State for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain was aware that the poor health of native workers and officials sent to serve in the Colonies was a threat to Britain’s growing empire. Mortality rates among officials in some parts of the world, particularly the Gold Coast of West Africa, were so high that salaries were sometimes 100% higher than those of colleagues elsewhere. Chamberlain was ready to accept lobbying for education and research to combat tropical diseases when Sir Patrick Manson became the Medical Advisor to the Colonial Office. Photo: Joseph Chamberlain. Credit: LSHTM Archives Service.
Sir Ronald Ross was working as a doctor in the Indian Medical Service when he discovered that the Anopheles mosquito transmitted malaria on 20th August 1897. Sir Patrick Manson, founder of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), was his mentor during this time as Manson had previously discovered that filariasis in humans was transmitted by mosquitoes. Ross was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1902 and knighted in 1911. He worked at the Liverpool of Tropical Medicine from 1902 to 1918 and continued to work on the prevention and eradication of malaria for the rest of his career, as have many staff members at LSHTM. The School’s archives hold a collection of over 20,000 items relating to Ross’ life and work. Photo: Ronald Ross, 1898. Credit: LSHTM Archives Service.
The London School opened its doors to 11 students on 2nd October 1899 as part of the Seaman’s Hospital Society’s Branch Hospital at the Albert Dock in the East End. The object of the School was not only to acquaint the students with tropical diseases and teach them how to treat them, but also to train them to investigate, observe, record and study the diseases - the start of LSHTM’s research had begun! Credit: LSHTM Archives Service.
LSHTM’s history of training female global health champions began in January 1900, when three women became the first to be enrolled. In the first five years of teaching (1899-1904), 36 out of the 564 students were female. These women all had a medical qualification before attending our School, and as far as we know went on to work in missions and hospitals overseas, paving the way for other females to follow. Photo: Students in a laboratory at the LSHTM's Royal Albert Dock site, 1900. Credit: LSHTM Archives Service.
How do you study the prevention of malaria before medicines have been developed to protect you? Three members of the London School of Tropical Medicine, GC Low, Louis Sambon and AJE Terzi, went to the Roman Campagna, near the mouth of the River Tiber, to carry out an important experiment in the malaria infested region. They spent three months in a wooden hut from dusk until dawn carrying out their experiments, allowing them to escape infection. Coloured photograph of a pen drawing by A. Terzi, ca. 1900.. Credit: Wellcome Collection.
In September 1900, Sir Patrick Manson wanted to demonstrate Ronal Ross’ discovery that malaria was transmitted to humans through mosquitos to a wide audience. Malaria-infected mosquitoes were sent from Rome to London in this box for his experiment, where volunteers, including Manson’s son, were bitten by infected mosquitoes and developed malaria. The volunteers were quickly treated with quinine and recovered from malaria, and whilst ethical standards wouldn’t allow an experiment like this today (and for good reasons!), it demonstrated the mosquito-malaria theory to the world. Photo: Mosquito box. Credit: LSHTM Archives Service.
George Carmichael Low attended the London School during the second session in January 1900, until his retirement in 1937. After being awarded the Craggs Travelling Scholarship of £300, he spent his first six months in Italy assisting with the malaria hut experiment before going to the West Indies to study filariasis, a parasitic disease caused by roundworms. He demonstrated the passage of filariae along the mosquito’s ‘mouth’ and their entry into the human host via the bite. Photo: George Carmichael Low. Credit: LSHTM Archives Service.
Sir Francis Lovell was a doctor who worked all over the world in his early career, later working as Chief Medical Officer and President of the General Board of Health in Mauritius from 1878-1893, and Surgeon-General of Trinidad and Tobago from 1893. He retired from the Colonial Medical Service in 1901. After arriving back in London, he became involved in raising funds for the London School and was elected Dean in 1903. Photo: Sir Francis Lovell, 1903. Credit: LSHTM Archives Service.
