David Douglas Cunningham

Who was David Douglas Cunningham?

David Douglas Cunningham FRS was a Scottish doctor and researcher who worked extensively in India in various aspects of public health and medicine. His studied the spread of bacteria and the spores of fungi through the air and also made studies on cholera.

He was born in 1843, in Prestonpans, the third son of the Rev. William Bruce Cunningham and Cecilia Margaret Douglas, daughter of David Douglas, Lord Reston, the heir of Adam Smith. He attended the Queen Street Institution in Edinburgh, and graduated with Honours in Medicine from Edinburgh University in 1867.

He entered the Indian Medical Service in 1868, and was selected to conduct a special enquiry into cholera by the Secretaries of State for India and for War. He studied for a time in Munich, and arrived in Calcutta in January 1869. From 1874 he was appointed as a special assistant to the sanitary commissioner of India. In June 1879 he was appointed Professor of Physiology in the Medical College, Calcutta, where he was much engaged in the investigation of cholera. There were multiple competing theories on the nature of diseases in general and cholera in particular.