Ch 2 Inauspicious Global Health Ventures...

Dr Mungo Park was a Romantic surgeon from Scotland, passionate to explore the Niger River, the one that flows past the fabled city of Timbuctu. Dr Joseph Ritchie was a Romantic surgeon from England, who wanted to explore the same river, approaching it from the north - that is, across the Sahara Desert. In the process, both lost - or perhaps ignored - their first calling: to care for those who were ill, to at least bring them comfort if they could not cure them. In those days, there was very little romantic about the surgery of the day: it had separated itself from barbers only one generation earlier.

But exploring was very romantic - and so was dying young. Both died young without ever finding out where the Niger River went, and without contributing anything to the global health of their day. These were early global health ventures, inauspicious beginnings to the profession. Lord have mercy.

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