David Livingstone 1813–1873

Abstract

Dr. Livingstone, I presume? When Henry M. Stanley, in his search for Britain’s lost hero in “Darkest Africa” found him at last in Ujiji on 10 November 1871, he uttered this classically stilted sentence, which is probably the first thing that will come to most people’s minds when their attention is drawn to the centenary of the Scottish missionary-explorer’s death. What, however, many of them will not ask is, Where did Stanley place the accent—on the surname or on the “Doctor?” The question is not a facetious one. Although white men of any kind were scarce in East Africa in the 1870s, white medical men were absolute rarities. Stanley, with a little luck, could have come across some sort of European on the shores of Lake Tangan-yika; but his chances of finding one who was also a doctor—and the most famous doctor in the whole of Africa at that time—were slender. David Livingstone, indeed, was not only one of the first medical missionaries in Central and Southern Africa but, as Michael Gelfand has pointed out in his invaluable study of Livingstone’s medical knowledge and influence, he may also “be considered one of the first medical missionaries in the world.”1. © 1973, British Medical Journal Publishing Group. All rights reserved.