William Alexander Young MB, CHB, DPH, DTM (5 November 1889 – 28 May 1928) was a Scottish doctor and surgeon who specialised in tropical medicine. He spent most of his career in West Africa, as a pathologist and bacteriologist with the West African Medical Service, where he studied many of the endemic diseases. The majority of his research was carried out in Nigeria and later at Accra, Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana). He is remembered particularly as having done much to further the understanding of the nature and epidemiology of yellow fever. He died aged 38 of yellow fever, during the course of his research.
Early life
Young studied medicine at University College, Dundee (now the University of Dundee) then a part of the University of St Andrews from 1906 until 1911 and gaining MB ChB with honour in all subjects. He gained experience as a surgeon at the Halifax Royal Infirmary, and then took a course of instruction at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, prior to joining the West African Medical Staff in 1913. During the First World War he held a commission as lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving with the Expeditionary Force in the Cameroons campaign in 1915–1916.
Research
In September 1920, he served with the West African Medical Service in Nigeria as assistant bacteriologist at the Medical Research Institute and later was appointed assistant director of the Medical Research Institute at Lagos. From June to December 1923, he was attached to the Nigerian Tsetse Investigation Staff. He then transferred to the Gold Coast on appointment as pathologist. In September 1924, he became director of the Medical Research Institute at Accra.
During his time in West Africa Young made detailed studies of syphilis, trypanosomiasis, blackwater fever, plague, dysentery, coccidiosis, dermatology and yellow fever, submitting papers on a diverse range of topics to medical journals, including Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the British Medical Journal and the West African Medical Journal. Although a generalist, he took a special interest in yellow fever, and worked closely with researchers from the Rockefeller Institute.
Young was also particularly interested in tsetse fly research. In 1923 he spent six months living and working at a tsetse research station at Sherifuri, Nigeria, accompanied by his wife, a nursing sister. To reach the field camp they set off from Lagos, and travelled by train to Kano (city). As no transport was available from Kano to Sherifuri, they cycled east from Kano, averaging 17 miles a day, sleeping in rest camps and followed by porters carrying enough stores and luggage for a one-year stay. They lived at the Sherifuri Camp, in specially built mud huts, along with one other researcher, a Dr Johnson. Local workers were employed to catch tsetse fly, using black umbrellas to attract them. The flies were then studied on site. His research into infections caused by the flies to both man and cattle were continued after his appointment as Medical Research Director at Accra, and he carried out extensive surveys, touring Ashanti and the Northern Territories.
Young worked exhaustively, both in the laboratory and in the field, often using periods of leave for further research. At his initiative the Medical Research Institute staff was increased and a second facility opened at Sekondi. He also designed and had fitted a mobile motor laboratory for use on field trips.
According to his obituary in the British Medical Journal, "Young's bent was towards investigation, and early in his career in West Africa he undertook studies in the fascinating problems of diseases endemic in that region … each in turn engaged his attention and by careful and painstaking work in the laboratory and in the field he added something to our knowledge of each of them. Incidentally he found time for the study of interesting pathological conditions encountered in the course of routine work, and from 1923 to 1926 he contributed a number of short papers on these subjects to the Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene…in annual and special reports he recorded the results of his studies in the epidemiology and pathology of yellow fever, and many of his observations are of first-class importance."