A short general history of the MRC

Early scientific research in South Africa
Medicine had come a long way too, albeit perhaps around fewer blind corners. Thus, Dr John Harley in 1864 discovered the ova of bilharzia in the urine of a patient from Uitenhage. In 1895 Sir David Bruce of the British Royal Army Medical Corps, working in Zululand, was able to demonstrate the cycle of nagana, a disease of cattle spread by a species of tsetse fly. This led him to associate the disease with human sleeping sickness, caused by a related parasite and transmitted by other tsetse flies. The great German bacteriologist, Robert Koch, was invited to the Cape by the colonial government to investigate the outbreak of rinderpest in Bechuanaland Protectorate and the northern areas. He had already isolated the causative organisms of anthrax, tuberculosis, typhoid and cholera, and had succeeded in developing a preventive inoculation against rinderpest.

Rinderpest, a disease of cattle, had the potential to cause political, economic and human catastrophe, and was instrumental in fomenting the Langeberg War on the Cape Colony's northern border. Threats of the return of the disease led to the formation of the Veterinary Research Institute in 1908 at Onderstepoort, north of Pretoria, by the government of the colonial Transvaal. Significantly, its name embodied the word 'research' and its activities in this sphere were noteworthy from the start. Work done at Onderstepoort certainly led to the establishment, on a formal footing, of local research in human medicine.

The South African Institute for Medical Research (SAIMR) was established in 1912 as a joint venture between the South African government and the Chamber of Mines, represented by the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association. Despite its name, the SAIMR was not founded as an institute purely for research. A great deal of its energies were directed to routine screening and diagnostic work.