Dr Daniel Cunningham

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

Dr Daniel Cunningham's papers cover the period 1941-1987, and include scientific and administrative correspondence, notes and data on experiments, lecture notes, articles, papers documenting his committee work (e.g. MRC Diet and Energy Committee 1951-1952; MRC Royal Naval Personnel Research Committee on exhaled air resuscitation, 1963), and conference and symposia papers e.g. correspondence and photographs relating to the J S Haldane Centenary Symposium, 1959-1961.

The archive also contains a small amount of material relating to the work of Cunningham's father, the physician Colonel John Cunningham (1880-1968) and his grandfather, the anatomist Professor Daniel John Cunningham, (1850-1909):

Colonel John Cunningham (1880-1968): draft articles, reports, experimental notes on his anti-rabies work 1907-1930s

Professor Daniel John Cunningham (1850-1909): draft writings, copy articles, slides, obituaries, 1881-c.1909

1881-1987

12 transfer boxes

Given to the library at Wellcome Collection by Mrs Judith Cunningham in September 2002, and by the National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists in c.2004.

Dr Daniel John Chapman Cunningham, an eminent respiratory physiologist, made important contributions to the understanding of the regulation of breathing in man.

He was born in India on 21 October 1919, the son of a doctor in the Indian Medical Service, and in 1938 he won an exhibition to Worcester College, Oxford. At the end of his second year, having won the university prizes in both physiology and anatomy, he went to Edinburgh to study at the Medical School.

An abbreviated clinical course allowed him to join the RAMC in 1943, and he spent the next two years attached to the 3rd Parachute Brigade in Northwest Europe. When the war ended Cunningham was moved to Germany where he had the opportunity to study the nutritional status of several thousand civilians. Among them he recorded hundreds of cases of hunger oedema and, through meticulously noted observations, he showed that the previous textbook description of this condition was erroneous.

Cunningham returned to Oxford in October 1946 for the third year of a degree course in animal physiology. Even before he had taken his final examination he had been elected Radcliffe Medical Fellow of University College, where he remained until his retirement.

Appointed a departmental demonstrator he was promoted to university lecturer and five years later he began the series of experiments that clarified many aspects of the control of breathing. Over the years his laboratory flourished, and he enjoyed close and fruitful collaborations with many colleagues, particularly Dr B.B. Lloyd and later Dr E.S. Petersen. Moreover, the breadth of his interests enabled him also to make significant contributions to medical science in the fields of circulatory and metabolic physiology.

Cunningham's great success as a human physiologist was attributable to three factors. First he was subtle in experimental design and inventive in the construction of new apparatus. The treadmill that enabled him to study respiration during exercise became famous, and he modified and improved the essential analyser for carbon dioxide. Secondly, he appreciated earlier than most other physiologists the value of the quantitative approach and of mathematical models that both describe existing data and allow predictions to be made (and tested) for new experimental conditions. Thirdly, he benefited greatly from an intellectual give-and-take both with colleagues investigating lower animals and with clinicians who were studying specific impairments in patients.

Cunningham married Judy Hill, a professional violinist, in 1947. He died on 26 February 1996.

At the Wellcome Library:

MS.1717 Notes on dissection of female thylacinus by Professor Daniel John Cunningham (1850-1909), c.1885

Held at Edinburgh University Library Special Collections:

Correspondence and working papers of Professor Daniel John Cunningham, anatomist (1850-1909), 1878-1908

Professional and scientific papers of Colonel John Cunningham, physician (1880-1968), 1905-1950

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.