Lieutenant Colonel Sydney Price James (17 September 1870 – 17 April 1946) was a British physician, parasitologist, and malariologist who served in the

Indian Medical Service The Indian Medical Service (IMS) was a military medical service in British India, which also had some civilian functions. It served during the two World Wars, and remained in existence until the independence of India in 1947. Many of its officer ...

Life and work

James was born at

Highgate Highgate is a suburban area of N postcode area, north London in the London Borough of Camden, London Boroughs of Camden, London Borough of Islington, Islington and London Borough of Haringey, Haringey. The area is at the north-eastern corner ...

to the Hereford family of Thomas Edward and Margaret, daughter of Rev. George Price. As a child he read books on travel and adventure and took a keen interest in outdoors natural history. An older brother went to South Africa with the navy and died from malaria in 1900, another was a keen photographer who invented Velox paper, and still another became a farmer in Rhodesia. He went to study medicine at

Guy's Hospital Guy's Hospital is an NHS hospital founded by philanthropist Thomas Guy in 1721, located in the borough of Southwark in central London. It is part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and one of the institutions that comprise the Kin ...

but a scholarship at St Mary's Hospital made him move and he graduated in 1895. He joined the Indian Medical Service in 1896 and trained at

Netley Netley, officially Netley Abbey, is a village on the south coast of Hampshire, England. It is situated to the south-east of the city of Southampton, and flanked on one side by the ruins of Netley Abbey and on the other by the Royal Victoria Co ...

before reaching Bombay. He was posted in

Waziristan Waziristan (Persian language, Persian, Pashto, Ormuri, , ) is a mountainous region of the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The Waziristan region administratively splits among three districts: North Waziristan, Lower South Waziristan Dis ...

in 1897 to deal with a plague outbreak and later joined the Tochi Valley Expedition during which he was invalided by typhoid back to England. During this break, he married Lisa Marles, daughter of Rev. W. Thomas of

Cardiganshire Ceredigion (), historically Cardiganshire (, ), is a county in the west of Wales. It borders Gwynedd across the Dyfi estuary to the north, Powys to the east, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire to the south, and the Irish Sea to the west. Ab ...

who had studied at the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music (RCM) is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including pe ...

. He returned to India to work at the Military Hospital in Secunderabad and later as a medical officer with the 19th Madras Infantry. Visit of the Malaria Commission of the League of Nations to Wellcome V0028075

Visit of the Malaria Commission of the League of Nations to Wellcome V0028075

James took an interest in research on

filariasis Filariasis is a filarial infection caused by parasitic nematodes (roundworms) spread by different vectors. They are included in the list of neglected tropical diseases. The most common type is lymphatic filariasis caused by three species o ...

when posted in

Quilon Kollam (;), is an ancient seaport and the fourth largest city in the Indian state of Kerala. Located on the southern tip of the Malabar Coast of the Arabian Sea, the city is on the banks of Ashtamudi Lake and is 71 kilometers (44 mi) nort ...

, Travancore. He independently determined the transmission of filiaria by mosquitoes. In 1900, during the

Boxer uprising The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, was an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist, and anti-Christian uprising in North China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious ...

, he was posted to the China Expeditionary Force Hospital at Shan-hai-Kwan and then Pekin. In 1901 he joined the Malaria Commission along with J.W.W. Stephens and C.W. Daniels in Calcutta. The Commission then moved to Nagpur, Jeypore, and Madras before returning to Lahore. In 1903 he became a Statistical Officer at Simla from where he worked on annual reports and several major publications including the ''Causation and prevention of malarial fevers'', ''Smallpox and vaccination in British India'' and continued to work on mosquitoes. When the Panama Canal opened in 1910 he was put in charge of measures to prevent the entry of yellow fever into India which included visits to ports around the world. Along with S.R. Christophers, J.W.T. Leslie, and D. Semple, he founded the journal ''Paludism'' in 1910. In 1916 he was put in charge of organizing the sanitary services in Mesopotamia during the war. In 1920 he was involved in the establishment of the Malaria Therapy Centre at Horton. In 1927 he was a member of the Fletcher Committee to reorganize medical research in India. He retired from the Indian service in 1918 and joined the ministry of health, living for much of the time afterwards in London and later at Bosham. In 1936 he retired from the ministry of health and worked at the Molteno Institute at Cambridge. James was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1931 and was a Prix Darling Laureate of the League of Nations (1934) and made CMG in 1935.

References

External links

A monograph of the Anopheles mosquitoes of India (1911) by S.P. James and W. Glen Liston
{{DEFAULTSORT:James, Sydney Price 1870 births 1946 deaths Indian Medical Service officers Malariologists Presidents of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene The Darling Foundation Prize laureates Companions_of_the_Order_of_St_Michael_and_St_George