ANOTHER DOCTOR HERO

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6667, 21 July 1928, Page 6 (Supplement)

ANOTHER DOCTOR HERO

l MARTYR TO YELLOW FEVEE. BRAYE SCOTSMAN’S SACRIFICE. Another doctor —the third within eight months—has lost his life in fighting yellow fever on tho West Coast of Africa. He was Dr.: William Alexander Young, Director of Medical Eesearch at Accra, a Scotsman. Professor Adrian Stokes died from yellow fever contracted in the course of research work at Lagos last September, and Dr. Hidcyo Noguchi, of the Rockefeller Institute, with whom Dr. Young had deen collaborating, died a few weeks ago • from tho same dread cause. ’Dr. Young’s tragic death occurred, on the eve of a journey he had arranged to make to New York. A man of dauntless courage, Dr. Young devoted the best years of Ms life to fighting disease on tho Wets Coast. Latterly he had identified himself closely with the work of the late Dr. Noguchi, and, it is believed, contracted yellow fever while attending Dr. Noguchi’s investigations. : “Dr. Young’s .earlier service,” an official at tho Colonial Office said, when the news of his death was ■ received, f ‘ was at Sierra Leone. During the war he served, in 1915 and 1916, with tho expeditionary force to the Camcroons. In 1923 he was a member of the tsetse fly commission in Nigeria and in the year following he was appointed to the Gold Coast and later in that year, Director of Medical Research at Accra.”

Dr, Young was born in 18SD, and studied tropical diseases at tho Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine after leaving St. Andrew’s University, of which he was a . graduate. For three months in the early part of the war he was house surgeon at the Seamen’s Hospital, Greenwich. “Ho knew and appreciated the risks he was running,” said a colleague, “but it was always his inspired belief that sooner or later his and other men’s work would bo crowned with success that kept Mm going.” A tragic feature of the deaths of Dr. Young, Dr. NogucM, and Professor Stokes is the conversation they had together a year ago. In a spirit of optimism, Professor Stokes who believed that he was on the eve of victory over yellow fever, then said, and subsequently wrote to a friend: “Wo have our fish hooked. It is now just a matter of landing Mm.” Now all three are dead.