Clot Bey and the Cairo School of Medicine

Abstract

MY attention has been directed to two paragraphs in the News and Views columns of NATURE of Jan. 14 concerning the centenary celebration of the School of Medicine, Cairo, and the International Congress of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. It is stated in those paragraphs that “The story goes that one afternoon the Viceroy Mohammed Ali was driving through the streets of Cairo on the way to Shubra Palace when he ordered his coachman to stop, and summoning a well-dressed Frenchman who was walking along the streets, informed the stranger that he wanted him to create a Medical School in Cairo.… Clot Bey, in spite of his ignorance of medicine, was an able man, who accomplished the task thus entrusted to him with conspicuous success, which was recognised later by the conferring of the M.D. degree on him by the University of Paris.”