Arthur Cecil Alport, M.D. (1880–1959) was a South African physician who first identified the Alport syndrome in a British family in 1927.
Occupation
physician
Citizenship
South Africa
Born
January 25, 1880
Died
April 17, 1959
Overview
Arthur Cecil Alport, M.D. (1880–1959) was a South African physician who first identified the Alport syndrome in a British family in 1927.
Biography
After graduating in medicine from the University of Edinburgh Medical School with an MB ChB in 1905, he returned to Transvaal Colony to practice medicine in Johannesburg, where he owned a small gold mine. However, this proved to be non-productive.
During World War I Alport served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in South West Africa and in Macedonia and Salonika. After the war Alport received his MD by thesis in 1919 from the University of Edinburgh Medical School. Alport worked as a specialist in tropical medicine at the Ministry of Pensions, London. From 1922 he worked for fourteen years under professor Frederick Samuel Langmead (1879-1969) as assistant director of the newly established medical unit at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington.
On the advice of Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955), Dr. Alport, in 1937, went to Cairo to become professor of medicine at the King Fuad I Hospital, University of Cairo. He was appalled by the fraudulent practices of dishonesty and corruption, which he encountered in Egyptian hospitals at the time, but even more so of the neglect of the poor patients, and it was entirely in keeping with his moral integrity that he initiated a crusade of reformation.
