IDENTITY STATEMENT
Reference code(s): GB 0120 WTI/PGS
Held at: Wellcome Library
Title: Shute, Percy George (1894-1977)
Date(s): 1932-1972
Level of description: Collection level
Extent: 1 box
Name of creator(s): Shute | Percy George | 1894-1977
CONTEXT
Administrative/Biographical history:
Percy George Shute OBE FRES (1894-1977) was a malariologist. While convalescing in the Manor Hospital, Epsom, from dysentery contracted during military service in Macedonia in 1917, Shute worked at the pathology laboratory under Sir Ronald Ross, who taught him how to stain malaria parasites and dissect mosquitoes. On recovery, he was employed in the eradication from Britain's civilian population of malaria probably spread by the return of infected personnel from Salonika. In 1922 he went to Vienna, where he learned from Professor Julius Wagner-Jauregg the techniques of malaria treatment for general paralysis of the insane. On his return he was closely involved in the establishment in 1925 of the Mott Clinic (later known as the Malaria Reference Laboratory) at Horton Hospital, Epsom. He spent the rest of his working life there and became an authority on British mosquitoes and on malaria and its causative organisms. He was Assistant Director of the Mott Clinic for the years 1944-1973. The Mott Clinic team discovered the third cycle of the malaria parasite in the human liver in 1948.
For further details, see obituary, British Medical Journal, 26 Feb 1977, and H.R. Rollin "The Horton Malaria Laboratory ... 1925-1975" in Journal of Medical Biography, 1994, 2, 94-97.
CONTENT
Scope and content/abstract:
The collection comprises drawings and photographs concerning mosquitos and malaria, plus correspondence with Sir Rickard Christophers.
ACCESS AND USE
Language/scripts of material: English
System of arrangement:
Divided into five different series.
Conditions governing access:
Open. The papers are available subject to the usual conditions of access to Archives and Manuscripts material, after the completion of a Reader's Undertaking.
Conditions governing reproduction:
Photocopies/photographs/microfilm are supplied for private research only at the Archivist's discretion. Please note that material may be unsuitable for copying on conservation grounds, and that photographs cannot be photocopied in any circumstances. Readers are restricted to 100 photocopies in twelve months. Researchers who wish to publish material must seek copyright permission from the copyright owner.
Physical characteristics:
Finding aids:
Collection level description.
ARCHIVAL INFORMATION
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling information:
Accruals:
Archival history:
According to his son, G.T. Shute, Percy George Shute donated 'a considerable amount' of his personal collection of papers and photographs 'with the Wellcome' (presumably the Wellcome Museum of Medical Science) at the time of his retirement in 1973, when the Malaria Reference Laboratory closed. On the closure of the WMMS, correspondence and a few photographs, which form the bulk of the material listed below, were placed in the archives of the Wellcome Tropical Institute, whose holdings were in turn transferred to the Archives and Manuscripts section of the Wellcome Library.
The Shute-Maryon collection of histology slides was transferred in 1989 to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Immediate source of acquisition:
Wellcome Tropical Institute
ALLIED MATERIALS
Existence and location of originals:
Existence and location of copies:
22 photographs of histology slides from the Shute-Maryon collection of histology slides are now in the Wellcome Trust's Tropical Medicine Resource; copies of the notes and correspondence relating to the slides, including some very detailed descriptions, comments on laboratory techniques and an account of the malaria epidemic in Kent in 1917, are preserved in this collection (WTI/PGS/5).
Related material:
Sir Rickard Christopher's papers (GC/161) include copies of correspondence with Shute, and some biographical material about him. Papers about the Horton Hospital can be found in P.C.C. Garnham's papers (PP/PCG).
The Shute-Maryon collection of histology slides was transferred in 1989 to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Clinical records of the Horton Hospital's malariotherapy of advanced syphilis are in the Library of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Publication note:
DESCRIPTION NOTES
Note:
Date(s) of descriptions: May 2008