Sir Patrick Manson (3 October 1844 in Old Meldrum near Aberdeen - 9 April 1922 in London) was a British physician who made important discoveries in parasitology and was the founder of the tropical medicine field.

He was the son of John Manson and Elisabeth née Blaihie. He obtained the Bachelor of Medicine at the University of Aberdeen in 1865, his Master of Surgery in 1866, his Medical Doctorate and Doctor of Law in 1886.

Between 1866 and 1889 he practiced medicine in Hong Kong and other cities on the Chinese coast. He demonstrated that the mosquito was the host of the Filarial Wuchereria bancrofti worm, which provokes filariasis. He then suggested that the agent that causes malaria was also spread by a mosquito. This discovery was one of the most important of parasitology, allowing to understand the spread of parasitic diseases.

Manson married in 1876 to Henrietta Isabella Thurbun, with whom he had three sons and one daughter. He was the founder of the medical school of Hong Kong, which later, in 1911 became the University of Hong Kong. He returned to London in 1890 and participated at the founding in 1899. and later taught. at the School of Tropical Medicine at the Albert Dock Seamen's Hospital, today the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1900, knighted in 1903 and in the following year awarded an honorary Doctorate of Science by Oxford University.

Publications

• Tropical Diseases : a Manual of the Disaeses 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

Patrick Manson

1844 births | 1922 deaths | British doctors | Malaria | Parasitologists | People associated with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | Fellows of the Royal Society | University of Aberdeen