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| Title: | J.W. Downie and Dr D.M. Blair: notes and recollections about two outstanding Scotsmen |
| Author: | Blair, R.D.D. |
| Year: | 2007 |
| Periodical: | Heritage of Zimbabwe |
| Issue: | 26 |
| Pages: | 126-150 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Zimbabwe |
| Subjects: | doctors politicians colonial period biographies (form) |
| About persons: | Dyson Milroy Blair (1907-1978) John Wallace Downie (1876-1940) |
| Abstract: | This paper is based on a talk by the author about his maternal grandfather, John Wallace Downie (1876-1940) and his father, Dyson Milroy Blair (1907-1978), two Scotsmen who made Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) their home. Downie was a businessman, politician, public servant and diplomat and played a role in the development of agriculture and mining in the 1920s and 1930s. Dr. Dyson Blair studied medicine and, after his arrival in Rhodesia, became interested in tropical diseases, starting him on his bilharzia, malaria and trypanosomiasis research. He was appointed Field Research Officer in the 1930s and became Director Preventive Services at the Ministry of Health in 1948. He set up the school for African Hygiene Assistants at Domboshawa. In 1953 he was appointed Director Medical Services, Southern Rhodesia, and in 1958 became Federal Secretary for Health. He retired in 1964 and spent the rest of his life as Honorary Research Officer at the Blair Research Laboratory. Almost half of the paper holds excerpts from reminiscences written by Dyson Blair on various aspects of life in Sinoia and field trips from trypanosomiasis and rodent surveys. Bibliogr. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
