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knowledge of healing from Asklepios to his daughter Hygeia.
The Kangaroo, is the familiar and readily identifiable symbol for Australia.
All in all it is a very pleasing and elegant design and the most popular choice of colour was the desert red and the deep blue of the outback sky.
Thank you to those members who took the time to write in about the design and the winner of the book, from ‘Victoria to Viagra,’ was
Alan Yip, of Sydney.
Vale Kevin McAnuff
The untimely death in January this year of one of the contemporary giants of the Pharmacy profession, brings home to each of us a recognition of our own mortality.
It has been said that history is what the dead inflict upon us, but this is not always the case as people like Kevin who have devoted their whole being to a cause, are prime examples of living history.
Perhaps one day in the future, the story of Kevin’s contribution to the stability and prosperity of pharmacy will be written, and this in itself will be history.
The record will reflect his personal, social, political or economic points of view as interpreted by a writer with his or her own biases, and that is how Kevin will be judged.
What we need to do is to recognise that history is really much closer to us all than that, and history comes to fruition when it explains the story that has unfolded before us every day.
History can never be boring or irrelevant.
We salute the memory of Kevin, who has joined the ranks of the greats of Australian pharmacy. He will be in his element arguing with the likes of Butchers, McGibbony, Mayhew
or Scott.
Geoff Miller
President’s Column
Malaria
There was a time when Australia was free of malaria. However, today with increasing numbers of Australians travelling to offshore destinations in the tropics, malaria is
brought back home on the return of some of these travellers.
We must remain vigilant as anopheles mosquitoes; the major vectors of the disease are present in our mainland tropical areas. Whilst malaria has been known for thousands of years, it is still responsible for the death of some three million humans annually, most of them poor African children.
Four centuries ago the revelation that quinine controls malaria did for medicine what gunpowder did for warfare. Quinine extracted from the bitter bark of the Cinchona tree which is indigenous to the Andes had been used by the local Andean Indians to control shivering in the cold. A Jesuit apothecary Agustino Salumbrina thought quinine may control shivering of fever and sent some to Rome. It is interesting to observe that until the discovery of the Americas malaria was uncontrollable in the old world.
The history of malaria has been recently recorded in a book by Fiammetta Rocco titled, The Miraculous Fever Tree: Malaria, Medicine and the Cure that changed the World.
Incredibly, the discovery that mosquitoes cause malaria was made only in 1902. A doctor in India named Ronald Ross made the breakthrough and in recognition he was awarded the first Nobel Prize for medicine.
From a pharmacists point of view an important aspect of malaria is that the plasmodium parasite develops resistance against all synthetic drugs and no vaccine has been developed. The most effective medicine is
still quinine.
Recording history
It remains a particular interest of mine to encourage and support the writing of pharmacy history, so it was pleasing to note that during a recent international round table discussion of leading world pharmacy historians, a topic of major importance was sources of research and documentation. They focused on documents which provide the primary sources of historical research.
A very interesting theme was developed by a Swiss historian who accused his pharmaceutical colleagues of still being focused on the achievements of ‘great men’ instead of moving on to more modern methods. Historical research does not only revolve around great men. It is changing and these changes challenge us to clearly define our aims and objectives in our contemporary world. This subject is one which will exercise the minds
of members of our Academy and I cordially invite you to marshal your thoughts and participate in our discussions.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Ross Brown, President
2 ■ Pharmacy History Australia
volume 2 ■ no 23 ■ July 2004