Edward L. Margetts: papers on mental health in East Africa, prepared for 1958 specialists' meeting

1958-1960

1 File

Edward Lambert Margetts (1920-2004), psychiatrist and historian of medicine, was born in Canada and graduated from McGill University in 1944. He worked initially in Vancouver, before moving to Kenya in the 1950s.For 8 years Margetts was the psychiatrist-in-charge at Mathari Hospital, Nairobi, a mental hospital where he employed techniques of Western scientific medicine but also carried out considerable research on the native healing traditions for mental illness across East Africa. He attended spirit possession ceremonies and described the practice of trepanation.By 1960 Margetts had returned to Canada, taking up a post at the University of British Columbia's Department of Psychiatry. He spent some time in Geneva in the 1970s working for the World Health Organisation, but apart from this remained at the the University of British Columbia for the rest of his career. He died in 2004.Biographical information about Margetts is given on the Oxford University School of African studies website.

At Wellcome Collection:Correspondence with Margetts occurs in the papers of the medical historians Charles and Dorothea Singer (PP/CJS/A.12 ) and the papers of the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (WA/HMM/CO/Chr/K.62 ).

Margetts, Edward L

Material formerly part of the Wellcome Library pamphlet collections, housed at the Enfield Road store.

The meeting for which Margetts produced these papers was documented in a book: Mental Disorders and Mental Health in Africa South of the Sahara: CCTA/CSA WFMH-WHO Meeting of Specialists on Mental Health, Bukavu, 1958 (London: Commission for Technical Co-operation in Africa South of the Sahara, 1960). Margetts' short report on psychiatric facilities in Kenya, held in this file, forms the basis of pp.42-45 of that book, joining similar short reports from a number of other sub-Saharan countries.

Abbreviations:CCTA: Commission de la Coop?ration Technique en Afrique au Sud du Sahara / Commission for Technical Co-operation in Africa South of the SaharaCSA: Consiel Scientifique pour l'Afrique au Sud du Sahara / Scientific Council for Africa South of the SaharaWFMH: World Federation for Mental HealthWHO: World Health Organisation

Wellcome Library; GB.