Shute , Percy George , 1894-1977

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.