Address given by the Rt. Hon. Lord Hankey, P.C. at the memorial service to Sir Edward Mellanby, G.B.E., K.C.B., F.R.C.P., F.R.S., held at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church, Westminster, 17th March, 1955.

  • Hankey, Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey, Baron, 1877-1963.
Date:
[1955?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Address given by the Rt. Hon. Lord Hankey, P.C. at the memorial service to Sir Edward Mellanby, G.B.E., K.C.B., F.R.C.P., F.R.S., held at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church, Westminster, 17th March, 1955. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    extraction rate of flour and the addition to it of calcium, as well as the initiation of the Emergency Public Health Labor¬ atory Services. Collectively, these preventive measures proved a very important contribution to the health of the nation, and many of them survive to this day. Besides keeping a vigilant eye on the ever-increasing activities of the Medical Research Council, including astonishing advances in therapeutics (as described in his Ludwig Mond Lecture of June, 1943), Mellanby was an active member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Cabinet, and he did not fail to warn us about the medical risks of modern warfare. He also rendered valuable services to the Air Ministry, as Chairman of their Flying Personnel Research Committee until 1949, and as a member of their Medical Advisory Board. The vast extension of the work of the M.R.C. brought to light in Mellanby unsuspected gifts as a scientific Adminis¬ trator of the highest order, but he never abandoned his direct contact with laboratory work. To quote a fellow- worker :— “In the early days of his secretaryship he kept experi¬ mental work going by week-end journeys to his old laboratory at Sheffield; after the building of the Nutrition Laboratory at Mill Hill, most of his week-ends were spent there, even during the war when the burdens and responsibilities of his official work were more than most men could carry as their entire occupation.”