Flindt, Michael Leighton Huntley (1923-2010)

The following is an interim description which may change when detailed cataloguing takes place in future:

The collection mainly covers the period 1960s-1980s. It contains material relating to occupational and industrial health and diseases, illnesses and conditions that Michael Flindt encountered and investigated during his career. Notably, files on exposure to Chloramine-T, washing product manufacturing hazards, substance allergies, skin prick tests for reaction and allergy testing, a project in Barnsley in the 1980s looking at the effects of suspected acute solvent exposure (toluene) in a sports factory, silicosis and enzyme hazards in detergent products, lead absorption and poisoning, enzyme exposure, respiratory hazards of papain, allergy to amylase and papain, inhalation hazards in factories. There is also a file on the International Conference on Pneumoconiosis in Venezuela in 1978 and British Occupational Health Society conferences.

An additional box of material was presented in 2015 and includes notebooks and papers relating to Barnsley Project on the results of exposure of workers to toluene, notably effects on memory, (including some worker case histories compiled by Flindt), papers relating to research on exposure of factory workers to papain and a-amylase, research on detergent enzymes and material relating to Flindt's work for Unilever.

Papers are mainly notes, reports, charts, ephemera, printed and published literature, off-prints, some experimental and research notebooks, articles, photographs. Some material includes patient or medical data.

This collection is a little sporadic and some parts are in a fairly disorganised condition. Material relating to research into silicosis at Unilever is absent due to a theft of Michael Flindt's property many years ago.

1960s-1980s

27 transfer boxes, 1 o/s box (containing x-rays)

The material was donated to the library at Wellcome Collection by the children of Michael Flindt, 15/11/2013.

Michael Flindt was educated at Bryanston School, Dorset and undertook his medical training at St Thomas's Hospital, London. He qualified as a doctor in 1945 and held resident posts as house physician and senior casualty officer at St Helier hospital, Carshalton, Surrey, and as resident anaesthetist and house surgeon at St Thomas's Hospital. After that he spent three years in Borneo with an oil company as a surgeon, but for much of the time was sole doctor to a 100-bed general hospital.

Back in England he worked as an anatomy demonstrator, general practitioner and a medical journal editor before obtaining in 1955 the post of industrial physician or medical officer with the Occupational Health Service of Unilever factories on Merseyside. He was offered the post because of, or perhaps in spite of, making it clear that his primary concern would be the health of the employees. At the time Unilever had its own company hospital and a comprehensive occupational health service and some of the nursing staff were still employed to visit sick employees in their homes. While in industry Flindt carried out work that led to the elimination of silicosis in the manufacture of domestic scouring products. Following the introduction of enzymes in biological production processes in 1966 he identified the hazard of sensitisation asthma from protylytic enzymes and this led to the recommendation that workers handling enzyme concentrate should wear masks and exhaust ventilation should be used at tipping-in points in factories as well as other dust control measures. (Michael Flindt's account of his investigations and the results were originally published in 1969 in the Lancet and can also be read in the journal Occupational Medicine. A related account by Flindt was published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, under the sub-heading 'Historical Perspectives in Occupational Medicine', Vol 29: 99-100, 1996).

After working at Unilever Flindt went to Manchester University where he became Honorary Fellow in Occupational Medicine and Honorary Consultant at Manchester Royal Infirmary and other Manchester hospitals. He was also an examiner for the diploma in industrial health of the England Conjoint Board and the occupational nursing certificate of the Royal College of Nursing and ran courses for the British and overseas doctors intending to take the Diploma in Industrial Health and refresher courses in Occupational Medicine. He lectured in the USA and Venezuela and was made Honorary Member of the Venezuelan Society for Occupational Medicine and also of the Venezuelan Society for Pneumonology and Phthisiology.

Whilst based at the University of Manchester Flindt identified the sensitisation hazard from other enzymes, papain and alpha-amylase and from chloramine-T. In addition he published work on lead and solvent exposure.

Michael Flindt died 14 November 2010 aged 87.

Sources and further biographical information: The Society of Occupational Medicine website/news/obituaries, Guardian 24 Feb 2011.

This collection is currently uncatalogued and cannot be ordered online. Requests to view uncatalogued material are considered on a case by case basis. Please contact collections@wellcomecollection.org for more details.