Arthur MacNalty

Arthur Salusbury MacNalty (20 October 1880 – 11 April 1969) KCB MRCS FRCP FRCS was the 8th Chief Medical Officer (the British office equivalent of the Surgeon General of the United States). Arthur MacNalty was also a ground breaking medical scientist. In early career in 1908, he teamed with the Welshman Thomas Lewis (cardiologist) to demonstrate that tracings from then nascent electrocardiography (ECG) could be used as a tool for diagnosing Heart block. This use of electrocardiography to diagnose heart block was the earliest application of ECG technology in cardiology and clinical medicine. He was a pioneer in the modern discipline of public health and in the specialty of preventive medicine. In the 1930s, MacNalty became among the earliest public health authorities, if not the earliest such authority, to publicly warn against the serious medical dangers of fad dieting, or, as it was then known “slimming”, and anti-obesity medications. He was particularly concerned with the neurological side effects of the then popular practice of dosing with thyroid extract to lose weight. MacNalty was too a prolific author of acclaimed and still relevant medical and other histories. He is the author of a total 96 books in the fields of medicine and / or history in 154 publications in 3 languages and which are held in at least 2700 known library collections.

Of the long tradition of MacDonlevy/MacNulty physicians of the British Isles, Arthur MacNalty, was born to a physician father F.C. MacNalty MD. Arthur MacNalty was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was Shute Exhibitioner and took second class in the Oxford Honor School of Physiology (researcher on central nervous system, Dept. of Physiology). From Oxford, he went to University College Hospital, London, where he was Filliter Exhibitioner and as above noted qualified MRCP and LRCP in 1907. MacNalty received his M.D.Oxon (1911) for his dissertation Lyphadenoma with relapsing Pyrexia. After a continued succession of medical and surgical postings at hospitals, he, thereafter, abandoned his course toward specializing as a thoracic physician (the, then, specialty of “chest service”, tuberculosis being still at the time endemic), when called to government service as a public health officer in 1913 (even though solicited to assume this office, MacNalty nonetheless worked in preparation therefore for nearly a year as Assistant Medical Officer and Tuberculosis Officer to Essex County Council, under their progressive County Medical Officer, J. Thresh), and through which public office ranks he rose to appointment as Britain’s Chief Medical Officer by 1935. Sir Arthur served in this position until his retirement in 1941. As a physician, Sir Arthur became a noted authority not only on communicable diseases and in the field of public health, but, also, on endocrine system based neurological disorders. He was president of both the Royal Society of Medicine’s Epidemiology and its Medical History sections. In his retirement, MacNalty continued his service to his country during the Second World War as Chairman of the Committees on Hospital and Nursing Provision of the Committee of Imperial Defence, and by organizing the medical administration of the Emergency Medical Services and the Evacuation Scheme of the Ministry of Health. The U.K.'s Public Health Laboratory Service developed from a wartime emergency service on the basis of a survey initiated by MacNalty. It was also MacNalty, who in a 1939 paper solicited by Oxford University advocated for the establishment of a pioneering preventive and social medicine department at the University and which lead to the establishment of the first Chair of Social medicine there by 1943.

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