Page 30 - VHSA - Onderstepoort 100 Years - Part 1

ONDERSTEPOORT 100
Smit were in the Section of Pharmacology and Toxicology; H. Graf (interned during WWII) was head of the Section of Chemical Pathology, Dips and Dipping; R.M. du Toit (Entomology) and R.J. Ortlepp (Helminthology) were in the Section of Parasitology; J.W.D. Coles was professor and head of the Poultry Section, and C.M. van Wyk and others were in the Wool Section.
De Kock officiated in the capacity of DVS on 21 November 1948 when a formal cocktail party was held at Onderste- poort to celebrate its 40th anniversary and
Lady Theiler’s 80th birthday. She died three
years later on 15 April 1951.
cold chain was still in its infancy. The strain concerned was used world-wide in commercial canine distemper vaccines for several decades thereafter. Consider for one moment how much income Onderstepoort could have earned if the strain had been patented.
De Kock was awarded the coveted Senior Captain Scott Medal by the South African Biological Society in 1933 and the Medal and Grant of the S.A. Association for the Advance- ment of Science in 1949, the year in which he was the
President of that organization. He was al- so a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and an Associate Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. He retired from Onderstepoort in November 1949, but was re-appointed in a tempo- rary capacity to conduct research until the end of 1954. Thereafter he moved to Cape Town where he worked for many years as an Honorary Research Associate in the Liesbeek Cancer Clinic. He died in Cape Town on 28 August 1973.
An unfinished symphony
John Isaac Quin was a member of the Class of 1924, the first class of students to graduate from the Onderstepoort Faculty, and he obtained his BVSc degree with honours. He immediately joined the government service at Onderstepoort as veterinary research officer and worked in the Section of Bacteriology until 1936. In 1928 he obtained a DVSc degree (cum laude) with a thesis based on the research work he had conducted on anthrax immunity. He became Professor of Physiology in 1934 (all faculty posts were part-time appointments in those days) and was senior veterinary research officer in the Section of Physiology from 1937-1948 where he did excellent research on photosensitivity, especially geeldikkop. As researcher he will probably be best remembered for determining with
From his correspondence with the Secretary of Agriculture at the time it is clear that de Kock was very concerned about the critical shortage of staff caused by the recent resignation of many excellent research workers such as A.D. Thomas, J.H. Mason, C.Rimington, E.J. Pullinger, H.P. Steyn and P.J. Meara. He also referred to the declining standard of research in comparison to the high level which had existed in Theiler’s time. This theme was repeatedly addressed and had been recognised in 1945 by, for example, B.J.F. Schonland (see above) as main argument to remove agricultural research from the confines of the civil service. The students’ strike, referred to above was reputedly specifically timed for newcomer de Kock’s pending tenure, who, it is said, took it very badly. Fortunately it turned out positively, at
30 least in terms of improved salaries.
De Kock was regarded as being rather absent-minded, perhaps a typical profes- sor. One of his well-remembered sayings (translated from Afrikaans), when the students drew his attention to some lesion or manifestation during a necropsy he had performed was ‘very interesting: just throw
it away’.
One of the most important scientific
“Quin was noted for his concise and lucid style, his articles serving as examples for countless young researchers on how publications should be written. His infectious enthusiasm, boundless energy, openness and faith in his personnel were lauded in his obituaries.”
discoveries, which became internationally
acclaimed during de Kock’s tenure, was the avianization of the virus of canine distemper (CD) by D.A. Haig. In 1948 the Lederle Laboratory Division of the American Cyanamid Company wrote to de Kock to ask for the CD strain that Haig had adapted to growth in fertile chick embryos, providing an import permit from the United States Department of Agriculture for the purpose.
So generous was Onderstepoort in those days that it had no qualms in going to utmost lengths to accede to this request, one of many examples of the Institute forfeiting its intellectual capital. There was no lyophilization in those days, air transport was rather slow and cumbersome and maintenance of a
Rimington that the photodynamic agent in hepatogenous photosensitizations (such as geeldikkop and Lantana poison- ing) was phylloerythrin, a degradation product of chlorophyll. However, this was not the final answer to the riddle of the aetiology of geeldikkop. Quin was noted for his concise and lucid style, his articles serving as examples for countless young researchers on how publications should be written. He was also responsible for initiating research on rumen physiology at Onderstepoort in the 1930s.
Quin succeeded de Kock as Deputy Director of the Insti- tute but, to de Kock’s disgust, he was only appointed on 1 April 1949, i.e. more than a year after the latter had been
PART 1
Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute: General History
1908-2008
Years