James Angus Doull

Background

Doull was born in on Septemver 8, 1889 in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. He was the son of James Forbes Doull, a wholesale and retail grocer, and Mary Chisholm.

Education

After receiving his secondary education at New Glasgow High School, Doull entered Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he was awarded a B. A. in 1911 and an M. D. , C. M. , in 1914. He interned for a year (1913-1914) at the Nova Scotia Hospital before beginning to practice medicine at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, in 1914. Doull earned a Doctorate of Public Health at Cambridge University in 1921.

Career

In 1915 Doull was commissioned a lieutenant in the British Royal Army Medical Corps. He spent the next three and a half years serving on the front lines in France, often performing emergency surgery on the battlefield. Largely as a result of his experience in the war, Doull decided to pursue a career in public health. While earning a D. P. H. at Cambridge University, he interned at the Brompton Hospital in London. In 1919 he returned to Canada and served briefly as provincial health inspector for Nova Scotia.

In 1920 Doull entered the newly established Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, the first such institution in the United States. Modeled on the German institutes of hygiene, it reflected the latest developments in public health with its emphasis on biological sciences, infectious disease, bacteriology, and statistics. Doull, appointed a Rockefeller Fellow, came under the tutelage of the noted epidemiologist Wade Hampton Frost, serving as his assistant. Frost argued that biological findings should be integrated with rigorous demographic studies in epidemiological research, a theme that Doull applied to his work throughout his career. The School of Hygiene appointed Doull associate in epidemiology and, in 1924, associate professor. During his tenure at Johns Hopkins, he conducted a comprehensive survey of the epidemiology of diphtheria in Baltimore and published a series of important papers concerning the prevalence, distribution, and transmission of the disease. He advocated the prophylactic use of diphtheria antitoxin at a time when many public health officials were questioning its value. While at Johns Hopkins, Doull was director of the John J. Abel Fund for Research on the Common Cold (1928-1930). In this capacity he published a series of reports of investigations relating to susceptibility to, and transmission of, upper respiratory infections. Through experiments with filterable viruses, he concluded that common colds could be caused only by infection, and not, as previously assumed, by dressing inadequately in cold weather or by sitting in a draft.

Doull left Johns Hopkins in 1930 to become professor of hygiene and public health at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, a position he held for the next fifteen years. During this period he conducted epidemiological investigations of such infectious diseases as typhoid fever, tuberculosis, and syphilis. At the frequent request of Surgeon General Thomas Parran, Doull would travel to the scene of an epidemic to determine its cause and prescribe measures for its control. In 1931, he became an American citizen. In 1936 he helped to found the Cleveland Health Museum, a facility dedicated to public education in preventive medicine. World War II drew Doull into world health politics, and he became a leading proponent of the creation of an international health organization.

In 1943 he traveled to Australia and New Zealand for the Lend-Lease Administration, to assist those countries in securing badly needed medical supplies. As a medical consultant to the United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Administration in 1944, Doull helped to draft international sanitary conventions for maritime and aerial commerce, in an attempt to avert serious epidemics.

In 1946 he resigned from Western Reserve University to become the first chief of the Office of International Health Relations of the U. S. Public Health Service, which was created to coordinate American health activities overseas. Doull left the Public Health Service in 1948 to become medical director of the Leonard Wood Memorial (American Leprosy Foundation), a position he held until his death.

In 1933, Doull had traveled to the Philippines to survey health conditions; tropical medicine, particularly the problem of leprosy, had remained a central interest. As director of the Leonard Wood Memorial, he initiated a series of important double-blind clinical studies to test the efficacy of several therapies for leprosy. Under Doull's guidance the American Leprosy Foundation dramatically expanded both its research and its clinical facilities.

While at Johns Hopkins he collected the papers of William Budd, an early British epidemiologist, and often exchanged notes regarding the early history of bacteriology with the renowned pathologist William Henry Welch. In 1952, Doull contributed the section "Bacteriological Era (1879-1920)" to History of American Epidemiology, a standard text. He died on April 6, 1963, in Baltimore, Maryland.

Achievements

• Although Doull's career in epidemiology and public health was multifaceted, it was for his work on leprosy that he was most often recognized. Throughout his life he maintained an interest in the history of medicine. In 1945 and 1946 Doull served as a United States delegate to the international meetings that led to the establishment of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Connections

On December 16, 1919, Doull married Ethel MacQuarrie; they had two children.

Father:

James Forbes Doull

He was a wholesale and retail grocer.

Mother:

Mary Chisholm

Spouse:

Ethel MacQuarrie

References

• Thesis for Degree of Doctor of Public Health: Public Health in Nova Scotia (Classic Reprint)
• Observations Made during the Epidemic of Measles on the Faroe Islands in the Year 1846, with a Biographical Memoir By Julius Jacob Petersenand an Introduction By James Angus Doull