Shute, Percy George

According to his son, G.T. Shute, Percy George Shute donated 'a considerable amount' of his personal collection of papers and photographs 'with the Wellcome' (presumably the Wellcome Museum of Medical Science) at the time of his retirement in 1973, when the Malaria Reference Laboratory closed. On the closure of the WMMS, correspondence and a few photographs, which form the bulk of the material listed below, were placed in the archives of the Wellcome Tropical Institute, whose holdings were in turn transferred to the Archives and Manuscripts section of the library at Wellcome Collection.

The Shute-Maryon collection of histology slides was transferred in 1989 to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Percy George Shute OBE FRES (1894-1977) was a malariologist. While convalescing in the Manor Hospital, Epsom, from dysentery contracted during military service in Macedonia in 1917, Shute worked at the pathology laboratory under Sir Ronald Ross, who taught him how to stain malaria parasites and dissect mosquitoes. On recovery, he was employed in the eradication from Britain's civilian population of malaria probably spread by the return of infected personnel from Salonika. In 1922 he went to Vienna, where he learned from Professor Julius Wagner-Jauregg the techniques of malaria treatment for general paralysis of the insane. On his return he was closely involved in the establishment in 1925 of the Mott Clinic (later known as the Malaria Reference Laboratory) at Horton Hospital, Epsom. He spent the rest of his working life there and became an authority on British mosquitoes and on malaria and its causative organisms. He was Assistant Director of the Mott Clinic for the years 1944-1973. The Mott Clinic team discovered the third cycle of the malaria parasite in the human liver in 1948.

For further details, see obituary, British Medical Journal, 26 Feb 1977, and H.R. Rollin "The Horton Malaria Laboratory ... 1925-1975" in Journal of Medical Biography, 1994, 2, 94-97.

At Wellcome Collection:

Sir Rickard Christopher's papers (GC/161) include copies of correspondence with Shute, and some biographical material about him. Papers about the Horton Hospital can be found in P.C.C. Garnham's papers (PP/PCG).

At other repositories:

The Shute-Maryon collection of histology slides was transferred in 1989 to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Clinical records of the Horton Hospital's malariotherapy of advanced syphilis are in the Library of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.