Arthur MacNalty


Sir Arthur Salusbury MacNalty was the 8th Chief Medical Officer. Arthur MacNalty was also a ground breaking medical scientist. In 1908, early in his career, he joined with the Welshman Thomas Lewis to demonstrate that tracings from the nascent science of electrocardiography could be used as a tool for diagnosing Heart block. This use of electrocardiography to diagnose heart block was the earliest use of ECG technology in cardiology and clinical medicine. He was a pioneer in the modern discipline of public health and in the speciality of preventive medicine. In the 1930s, MacNalty became among the earliest public health authorities, if not the earliest, to warn against the serious medical dangers of fad dieting and anti-obesity medications. He was particularly concerned with the neurological side effects of the popular practice of dosing with thyroid extract to lose weight. MacNalty was a prolific author of acclaimed medical and other histories, which have retained their value. He is the author of 96 books in the fields of medicine and history in 154 publications in three languages, which are held in at least 2,700 library collections.

Life

Arthur MacNalty was born in Glenridding in Westmorland into a long line of MacDonlevy/MacNulty physicians living in the British Isles. MacNalty was the son of Dr Francis Charles MacNalty MD and his wife, Hester Emma Frances Gardner. MacNalty was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was Shute Exhibitioner and took second class in the Oxford Honor School of Physiology. From Oxford, he went to University College Hospital, London, where he was Filliter Exhibitioner and qualified MRCP and LRCP in 1907. MacNalty received his M.D. Oxon for his dissertation Lyphadenoma with relapsing Pyrexia. After a series of medical and surgical postings at hospitals, he abandoned his course toward specializing as a thoracic physician, when called to government service as a public health officer in 1913 and through which public office ranks he rose to his appointment as Britain's Chief Medical Officer. MacNalty became an authority on communicable diseases, public health and on endocrine system based neurological disorders. He was president of the Royal Society of Medicine's Epidemiology and its Medical History sections. During the Second World War MacNalty was Chairman of the Committees on Hospital and Nursing Provision of the Committee of Imperial Defence and organised the medical administration of the Emergency Medical Services and the Evacuation Scheme of the Ministry of Health. The British Public Health Laboratory Service developed from a wartime emergency service on the basis of a survey initiated by MacNalty. In a 1939 paper solicited by Oxford University, MacNalty advocated the establishment of a pioneering preventive and social medicine department at the University, which lead to the establishment of the first Chair of Social medicine there by 1943.

Family

In 1913 MacNalty was married to Dorothea Simpkinson de Wesselow. MacNalty had two daughters called Renee who married James Cumming and Pamela. Sir Arthur has two living grandchildren, five great grandchildren and ten great great grandchildren.

Some medical papers