The private collection of Dr Colin McDougall is held at the Wellcome Library. The cataloguing of the collection is described here.
The collection includes books, photographs, slides and correspondence mainly related to medical and scientific work with Dr R J W Rees, Laboratory for Leprosy and Mycobacterial Research, National Institute for Medical Research, London and providing a context for the introduction and implementation of multiple drug therapy (MDT) by WHO in 1981/82 and the cultivation of M leprae in the nine-banded armadillo. Books and documents in English, French, Spanish, German, Hindi, and Japanese (some of which were passed from Dr Ernest Muir to Dr Stanley Browne, and then to Dr McDougall) encompass changing emphases since the early 1900s in the diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of leprosy patients in many countries. These include Brazil, Africa (the Belgian Congo, Nigeria), Spain, the United States of America, India, and Haiti. Abstracts of International Leprosy Congresses (1953-1998) held in Madrid, London, Bergen, Mexico, New Delhi, The Hague, Florida (USA), and Beijing are part of the collection.
There are also copies of the WHO Expert Committee Reports from the late 1970s onwards, together with most of the WHO progress reports, notably on the implementation of MDT, from 1981/82. There are various editions of books authored or co-authored by Dr McDougall on clinical leprosy, MDT implementation and laboratory technology in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese. The extensive slide collection depicts the presentation of leprosy on the body in all its various manifestations as well as the histopathology of leprosy in experimental animals, including the nine-banded armadillo. There are documents associated with tours undertaken by Dr McDougall on behalf of WHO and other agencies to Fontilles in Alicante (province), Spain (1971), Guyana (1975), China (1981), Korea (1982), Peru (1986), Egypt (1989), the Sudan (1990), Saudi Arabia (1991), South Africa (1992), Myanmar (1993), Orissa (1985 and 1995), Mexico (1996), Turkey (1997), and Bangladesh (1997).
The correspondence files include exchanges between Dr Glynn Griffiths in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Robert Cochrane (UK) in the 1960s on the probable need for MDT; Dr Colin McDougall and Dr Dick Rees, over a period of thirteen years, on experimental leprosy and histopathological findings in the mouse, hedgehog and armadillo, drug trials (including those conducted by THELEP), experiments to elucidate possible modes of transmission of leprosy, vaccine development (Malawi, Venezuela), clofazimine and thalidomide in the treatment of leprosy. Finally, there is a collection of ‘prototype’ blister calendar packs, relating to the first publication from Oxford in 1983 of designs for their use in the treatment of patients with pauci- or multi-bacillary leprosy. (A personal publication list is available)
Entry made November 2001; updated January 2016