The University of Oxford
Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine
John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford, OX3 9DU, UK
from: Professor David A Warrell
Emeritus Professor of Tropical Medicine, University of Oxford
Tel ++44(0)1865 234664
Fax ++44(0)1865 760683 E-mail: david.warrell@ndm.ox.ac.uk
Dr Michael Eddleston
Edinburgh
27th February 2009
Dear Michael,
Re: Oxford Clinical School Tropical Day
As you know, I have been intimately involved in this annual event since I returned to Oxford in
1986. It was started by David Weatherall, Bent Juel-Jensen, and Herbert Gilles (Liverpool School
of Tropical Medicine) in 1980. The format was talks by local and visiting tropicalists in the
morning and then the weekly Department of Medicine Grand Rounds devoted to tropical cases
followed by a quiz for the students. It took place in the introductory pathology or laboratory
medicine part of the clinical course, right at the beginning, and so most of the students had little
background medical knowledge.
The aim was to stretch their perspectives beyond the Oxford ring road to the vast real world of
poverty, neglect but marvelous opportunity, in the rural and urban tropics.
Freshly returned from Thailand, I ran the Tropical Day until my enforced retirement in 2006 - 20
years of sheer delight. We attracted outstanding speakers from most of the tropical continents and
from the London, Liverpool and European Tropical Schools. An essential element was the
accompanying laboratory display of tropical parasites organised by Jeff Friend and his successors
at the Liverpool School.
There was much evident enthusiasm on the part of the medical students but the outstanding
legacy of the Tropical Day has been the range and ambitious character of their final year medical
electives and, most of all, the recruitment of some our most able characters, yourself included, to
a continuing commitment to research and service in tropical developing countries. Hence, the
enormously successful (if I may so!) Oxford Tropical Medicine Network, which now involves the
likes of Profs Nick White FRS, Kevin Marsh, Jeremy Farrar, Nick Day and Paul Newton. The
tropical day was later transfected by my protegés to Imperial College and even to Cambridge.
A few years ago, Edinburgh led UK tropical medicine under the leadership of Dr Frederick J
Wright, Prof David Walliker, and their colleagues. It is high time that the golden age of
Edinburgh tropical medicine was reestablished. One bold step towards such a reemergence would
be the setting up of an annual tropical day.
Best wishes and good luck,
David A. Warrell MA DM DSc FRCP FRCPE HonFCeylonCP FRGS FMed Sci.