Omnibus: the Tuesday feature

An ecologist and 'humane'
Nazi experiments

Barbara Millar's Scot of the Month: Kenneth Mellanby

He has been called 'England's ecological star' and, indeed, much of his education and years of employment were spent south of the border. But Kenneth Mellanby, ecologist and entomologist, was of undisputed Scottish stock.
     Mellanby was born on 26 March 1908 in Barrhead, East Renfrewshire, the son of Alexander Mellanby, professor of mechanical engineering at Glasgow's Royal Technical College, and his wife, Annie. He was sent to Barnard Castle School in County Durham to be educated, completing his degree in natural sciences at King’s College, Cambridge and obtaining his PhD – on the susceptibility of human parasites to overheating and dessication – at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
     In 1933 he began his career as a medical entomologist, marrying fellow entomologist Helen Neilson in the same year, and together they travelled to Entebbe in Uganda, to work on the embryology and reproduction of the tsetse fly. Their only child, Dr Jane Mellanby, a professor of psychology at Oxford University, says that in the mid-1930s, when they were in Uganda 'white men and, even more so, white women, especially one with pink-red hair, were rarities in the wild parts of the country and her appearance caused much amazement among the locals'.
     When they returned, the Mellanbys moved to Sheffield, where he carried out research on head lice – correlating the incidence of lice with poverty and family size. He also set up a research unit to study the effects of scabies infestations, putting scabies in bedding to study how long it would take for someone to be infected. This led to extensive observation and treatment of military personnel in a special hospital for infested soldiers. Mellanby also kept 47 volunteers – conscientious objectors – infested for months at a time, although he did devise a successful treatment. He was awarded the OBE for his scabies work.
     He conducted experiments on water and food deprivation and on vitamins and, at one time, suggested infecting his volunteers with malaria, albeit with their consent. The Medical Research Council (where his uncle, Sir Edward Mellanby, was secretary) quickly put paid to any thoughts of this dangerous human experiment. He wrote up his experiences in 'Human Guinea Pigs' in 1945, suggesting the creation of a permanent institute for human experiments.
     During World War II, Kenneth Mellanby was in Burma and New Guinea, where he investigated the transmission and control of the acute infectious disease scrub typhus. He suggested to Helen that she qualify in medicine, so that they could create an even more effective research team together. Helen Mellanby did qualify as a doctor, but not long afterwards, in 1946, they divorced.
     In 1947, Mellanby's work took him to Nigeria where he helped to found that country's first university in Ibadan, becoming its first principal from 1948 until 1953. 'He hated bureaucracy, though he was quite a good administrator,' says Jane Mellanby. 'He always tended to speak his mind to those in authority.' The University College of Ibadan has continued to flourish; its former students include 1986 Nobel Literature Prize-winner Wole Soyinka. Kenneth Mellanby's name lives on there – he is immortalised in a male undergraduate hall of residence.

[go to page 2]