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A. Yale Massey

A. Yale Massey (August 12, 1871 – August 22, 1922), B.A., M.D., was a Canadian physician, missionary, and medical researcher in Portuguese Angola and the Belgian Congo. Massey mapped the occurrence of African sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis) in the Belgian Congo, showing that the disease was spreading along the banks of rivers. He was elected a fellow of the newly formed Society of Tropical Medicine in London in 1907.[5] He received the Chevalier de l'Ordre Royal du Lion from the King of the Belgians.[3][1]

A. Yale Massey
Born(1871-08-12)August 12, 1871[1]
Wallbridge, Hastings County, Canada[2][3][4]
DiedAugust 22, 1922(1922-08-22) (aged 51)[3]
Irebu, Coquilhatville, Belgian Congo[3]
CitizenshipCanadian
EducationUniversity of Toronto; University College Hospital, London
Scientific career
InstitutionsCanada Congregational Foreign Missionary Society, Belgian Congo Medical Service

Early life and education

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Alfred Yale Massey was born in Wallbridge, Hastings County, Ontario, Canada[3] on August 12, 1871, to Levi Massey (April 13, 1827 – January 1, 1912) and Ann Eliza McClatchie (October 1, 1838 – October 28, 1919).[6][7] He grew up in Belleville, Ontario.[8]

In 1876, Mrs. Levi Massey was the founding president of the Woman's Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Canada, in Belleville, Ontario.[9]

Career

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Alfred Yale Massey graduated with his B.A. from Victoria College in 1893 and taught for a year at Wiarton.[10] He went on to earn his M.D., C.M. in 1898 from Trinity Medical College. Both later became part of the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada.[11][3]

Grenfell Mission

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Massey spent a year working with the Grenfell Mission in Labrador as part of The Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen.[10]

Foreign Missions

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In 1899, Alfred Yale Massey joined the foreign mission of the Canada Congregational Foreign Missionary Society (later part of the United Church of Canada).[12]: 355, 360  Massey left Montreal, Canada on July 26, 1899, and arrived at the port of Benguella in Portuguese Angola on September 17, 1899.[2] On October 25, 1899, Massey arrived at the mission station in Chisamba to begin work as a missionary doctor.[13][14] Massey was described as a "beloved physician" and credited with building the first hospital in Bié Province.[15]

It was a period of political turmoil, danger and unrest in Portuguese Angola. The Portuguese government permitted "contract labour" - which Massey described as "a legal term - really slaves". He sent a set of slave shackles home to Canada, that had been left behind by a dealer's caravan.[12]: 355, 360 

The marriage of Dr. Alfred Yale Massey and Miss Ella Margaret Arnoldi occurred on either December 7, 1902[11] or December 9, 1902,[16][2] at Benguella, West Africa. They were, according to The Missionary Herald of March 1903, "both of the West Central African Mission."[16]: 162  Born in Walton, Lean, England on April 27, 1879, Arnoldi was a registered nurse. She is listed as embarking from Montreal on June 21, 1902, and arriving at Benguela on October 10, 1902, two months before their wedding.[2][14]

In the Annual Report of 1903-1904, it was reported that the couple had returned to North America "on account of Mrs. Massey's health".[14]: 25  They arrived in Montreal on May 16, 1904.[2] They were released from the mission as of September 5, 1905.[2]

Company doctor

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Yale Massey's Map of Sleeping Sickness in the Belgian Congo, 14 February 1907

Massey worked as a company doctor for the Tanganyika Concessions Company and Union Minière du Haut-Katanga in the Katanga Province.[17] In 1905, Massey reported the presence of sleeping sickness among Baluba porters who had been recruited to work from the Bukama Territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[18] Sleeping sickness was a devastating fatal disease that would not be treated successfully until 1920, when Louise Pearce tested arsenic-based drugs.[19]

In 1906 and 1907, Yale Massey mapped the occurrence of African sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis) and the distribution of the riverine tsetse fly Glossina palpalis and savannah tsetse fly Glossina morsitans in the Belgian Congo, Africa. His maps showed that the disease was spreading along the banks of rivers.[20] He reported the new occurrence of the disease in the Upper Congo in The Lancet.[21]

Chief Medical Officer

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As of 1908 Massey was reported to be practicing medicine of the ear, eye, nose and throat in St. John's, Newfoundland.[22] Subsequently, Massey studied at University College Hospital in London, receiving his Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery of the Society of Apothecaries (L.M.S.S.A.Lond.) in 1913.[3]

Massey enlisted during World War I and served with the rank of Major in the Belgian Congo Medical Service of the Belgian Army. He was stationed at Coquihatville Hospital in the Belgian Congo.[1]

Eventually Massey became a Chief Medical Officer, a position he held until his death.[10] In July 1921, the Vice-Governor General complained that Massey was not following the accepted practice of segregating his patients: he was seeing ambulatory African patients at the Hopital de la Rive where Europeans were treated, rather than at a crumbling hospital designated for Africans.[23]

Throughout his career, Massey continued to study, treat and write about infectious and tropical diseases such as encephalitis, onyalai, and tuberculosis, becoming highly regarded.[10][24][25][8] He was elected a fellow of the newly formed Society of Tropical Medicine in London in 1907.[5] Massey received the Chevalier de l'Ordre Royal du Lion from the King of Belgium.[3][1]

Massey corresponded with Edwin Ray Lankester[26] and sent specimens of ticks to members of the London School of Tropical Medicine.[27][28] At least one species has been named after him.[29]

Massey was also an amateur photographer, whose photographs appear in the autobiography of naturalist Cuthbert Christy.[30]

Massey died on August 22, 1922, in Irebu, Coquilhatville, Belgian Congo.[3]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d "Major Alfred Yale Massey Regimental Number: NA". Canadian Great War Project. Archived from the original on 2017-08-23.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Vinton, John Adams (1910). Vinton book: 1885-1910 (Missionari es of the A.B.C.F.M. Memorandum, 1885 - 1910). Vol. IV. p. 30. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Dr. Alfred Yale Massey". British Medical Journal. 2 (3233): 1198. 16 December 1922. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.3233.1198. ISSN 0007-1447. S2CID 220186814. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  4. ^ "Levi Massey – Methodist Episcopal Member Sidney Township Hastings County". fadedgenes. 4 November 2012. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  5. ^ a b "Personals". Canadian Practitioner. XXXII (11). Bryant Press: 706. 1907. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  6. ^ "FamilySearch.org". ancestors.familysearch.org. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  7. ^ "Person Page 2196". Dan Buchanan's Genealogy Web Site. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  8. ^ a b Brearley, Donald (2017). "Physicians from the Belleville Area in Ontario who graduated before 1940" (PDF). Physicians Directory. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  9. ^ Gagan, Rosemary Ruth (1992). Sensitive Independence: Canadian Methodist Women Missionaries in Canada and the Orient, 1881-1925. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. ISBN 978-0-7735-0896-5. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  10. ^ a b c d Pringle, J. S. (1989). "Botanical exploration of the Canadian watershed of Lake Huron during the nineteenth century" (PDF). Canadian Horticultural History. 2 (1&2): 62–63. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  11. ^ a b "Items of Interest". Canadian Journal of Medicine and Surgery. xiii (1): 61. 1903. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  12. ^ a b Soremekun, Fola (1971). "Religion and Politics in Angola: the American Board Missions and the Portuguese Government, 1880-1922". Cahiers d'Études africaines. 11 (43): 341–377. doi:10.3406/cea.1971.2791. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  13. ^ American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1900). The Ninetieth Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (PDF). Boston: Congregational House. p. 28. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  14. ^ a b c American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1904). Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1903-1904. Boston: Congregational House. pp. 25, 162. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  15. ^ Tucker, John T. (1927). Drums in the darkness: The story of the Mission of the United Church of Canada in Angola, Africa (PDF). Toronto: Committee on Literature, General Publicity and Missionary Education of the United Church of Canada. p. 84. ISBN 978-1199373601. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  16. ^ a b "Notes for the Month". The Missionary Herald. Boston: Published for the Board by Samuel T. Armstrong. March 1903. p. 128. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  17. ^ "Massey, Yale, fl 1910, doctor". RCS photographers index. Cambridge University Library. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  18. ^ Musambachime, Mwelwa C. (1981). "The Social and Economic Effects of Sleeping Sickness in Mweru-Luapula 1906-1922". African Economic History. 10 (10): 151–173. doi:10.2307/3601298. ISSN 0145-2258. JSTOR 3601298. PMID 11614142. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  19. ^ "Dr. Louise Pearce". Changing the Face of Medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved 13 October 2014.
  20. ^ Massey, A. Yale (October 30, 1906). "Miscellany: Sleeping Sickness (See reports of February 14, 1907; October 30, 1906)". Wellcome Collection. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  21. ^ Yale Massey, A. (August 1906). "A New Sub-Species of Glossina Palpalis on the Upper Congo". The Lancet. 168 (4327): 296. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(01)30566-4. ISSN 0140-6736. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  22. ^ "Maritime provinces". Canada Lancet. XLI (9). Lancet Publishing Company: 716. 1908. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  23. ^ Geenen, Kristien (February 2019). "Categorizing colonial patients: segregated medical care, space and decolonization in a Congolese city, 1931–62". Africa. 89 (1): 100–124. doi:10.1017/S0001972018000724. S2CID 151174421. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  24. ^ "Deaths". Journal of the American Medical Association. 80 (3). American Medical Association: 199. January 20, 1923. doi:10.1001/jama.1923.02640300049028. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  25. ^ Wicks, A. C. B. (1972). "Onyalai — A Disappearing Disease Entity" (PDF). The Central African Journal of Medicine. 18: 93–97. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  26. ^ "Keeper of Zoology's Correspondence and Files". Natural History Museum, London. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  27. ^ Keirans, James E. (1984). George Henry Falkiner Nuttall and the Nuttall Tick Collection. U.S. Government Printing Office.
  28. ^ Nuttall, George Henry Falkiner; Cooper, William Francis; Warburton, Cecil; Robinson, Louis Edward (1908). Ticks: pt.1 Argasidœ (Bibliography 35 p.) 1908. Cambridge University Press.
  29. ^ Walker, Jane B.; Keirans, James E.; Horak, Ivan G. (15 September 2005). The Genus Rhipicephalus (Acari, Ixodidae): A Guide to the Brown Ticks of the World. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-316-58374-6.
  30. ^ Christy, Cuthbert (29 September 2017). Big Game and Pygmies - Experiences of a Naturalist in Central African Forests in Quest of the Okapi. Read Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4733-4335-1. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
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