Andrew Davidson

Andrew Davidson was born in Kinneff, Aberdeenshire, on 22 August 1836. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, graduating in 1862. He and his wife Christina joined a mission to Madagascar in the same year, where Davidson opened a practice in Antananarivo. In 1863 he was appointed Court Physician to Radama II, and in 1865 he received permission to establish a mission hospital. Following a dispute with the Malagasy Prime Minister, Davidson and his wife moved to Mauritius, where he held several medical posts and published reports on malaria and public health. After returning to Britain in the early 1890s, he published 'Geographical pathology' in 1892 and 'Hygiene and diseases of warm climates' in 1893. Davidson was an early advocate of tropical medicine and in 1900 became the University of Edinburgh's first lecturer in the subject. He died in Ilkley, Yorkshire, on 13 January 1918.