Malariology in Australia between the first and second world wars (Part 2 of ‘pioneers of Australian military malariology’)

Two ‘push’ factors drove Australian malariological research in the decades before World War II. The first was the nation’s own experience of malaria in its tropical north, where local, usually seasonal, outbreaks of the disease occurred fairly regularly. The second was the Army’s experience of malaria during overseas deployments. During the two inter-war decades, the 1920s and 30s, Australian research into tropical diseases generally and malariology in particular benefited from the return to civilian life of former Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) medical officers who had seen malaria at first hand during World War I. A small but significant number of them specialised in tropical medicine post-war in either the specialist medical research institutes or university medical faculties. As the war ended they began publishing their findings. This corpus of research reports was the ‘soil’ from which Australian malariology grew.