Dobell, Cecil Clifford

(b. Birkenhead, England, 22 February 1886; d. London, England, 23 December 1949)

protozoology.

Dobell is best-known for his meticulous researches on human intestinal protozoa and for a remarkable monograph on the pioneer microscopist Leeuwenhoek. He was the eldest son and the second of five children of William Blount Dobell, a Birkenhead coal merchant, and his wife, Agnes Thornely. Clifford never used his first Christian name. Owing to his father’s unstable business fortunes, his early education was erratic and informal. At thirteen Dobell went to Sandringham School, Southport, as an unhappy boarder. There he headed his class, developed lasting tastes for classical literature and music, and showed talent for art and biological science. Helped by his headmaster, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1903. He completed one year of medical studies before his tutor, the zoologist Adam Sedgwick, directed his interests toward protozoology. Obtaining his B.A. degree in the natural sciences tripos with first-class honors in 1906, Dobell took the M.A. in 1910 but disdained the Sc.D. until 1942.

He left Cambridge in 1907 to study at Munich under Richard Hertwig and proceeded thence to the zoological station in Naples, where he began investigating the life history and chromosome cycle of the Aggregata of cuttlefish and crabs, on which he published an important monograph in 1925. Returning to Cambridge, he was elected a fellow of Trinity College (1908–1914) and won the Rolleston Prize and the Walsingham Medal for original research in biology. He was also awarded the Balfour Studentship, which enabled him to study parasitic protozoa at Colombo, Ceylon. In 1910 Dobell became lecturer in protistology and cytology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. Moving to the Wellcome Bureau of Scientific Research in 1915, he studied amoebic dysentery for the War Office and directed courses in the diagnosis of intestinal protozoal infections. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1918. The following year Dobell published his classic monograph, The Amoebae Living in Man, and was appointed protistologist to the Medical Research Council. He held this position at the National Institute for Medical Research, Hampstead, until death from cerebral hemorrhage in his sixty-fourth year prevented the retirement he dreaded.

Dobell’s fastidious tastes and exacting standards limited the scope but not the depth of his interests and accomplishments. Impatient with inaccuracy and scornful of pretentiousness, he was unpopular for his critical tongue, aloof demeanor, and patrician mien; but he was warmhearted within a restricted circle of friends whom he unstintingly admired, such as Adam Sedgwick, D’Arcy Thompson, and David Bruce. In 1937 Dobell married William Bulloch’s stepdaughter, Monica Baker. Their happy relationship relieved the lonely, incessant labors of his last twelve years.

Dobell was a self-demanding perfectionist whose tireless industry, stringent observations, and independent conclusions became legendary. He brooked no technical assistants and abhorred teamwork, made personal pets of his experimental Macaca monkeys, and carefully infected himself with all manner of intestinal protozoa. These attributes bore special fruit in the sustained researches, begun in 1928 and nearly completed at his death, which elucidated the in vitro life histories and the cross-infectivity of practically all known species of human and simian intestinal amoebae. Many of his publications revealed discriminating scholarship in the history of science. His greatest labor of love was the biographical masterpiece Antony van Leeuwenhoek and His “Little Animals” (1932). Dobell had to learn seventeenth-century Dutch to decipher and translate his hero’s quaint epistles to the Royal Society. This work will probably outlive recollections of his many contributions to experimental biology and medicine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. The most complete bibliography of Dobell’s works (121 items, including four posthumous papers) is provided with the obituary by Doris L. Mackinnon and C. A. Hoare (see below). Among his more outstanding publications, many of them lengthy and illustrated with his own beautifully precise drawings, are “The Structure and Life-History of Copromonas subtilis nov. gen. et nov. spec: A Contribution to Our Knowledge of the Flagellata,” in Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, 52 (1908), 75–120; “Researches on the Intestinal Protozoa of Frogs and Toads,” ibid, 53 (1909). 201–277; “On the Socalled ‘Sexual’ Method of Spore Formation in the Disporic Bacteria,” ibid., 579–596; “Contributions to the Cytology of the Bacteria,” ibid, 56 (1911), 395–506; “A Commentary on the Genetics of the Ciliate Protozoa,” in Journal of Genetics, 4 (1914), 131–190; “The Chromosome Cycle in Coccidia and Gregarines,” in Proceedings of the Royal Society, 89B (1915), 83–94; “On the Three Common Intestinal Entamoebae of Man, and Their Differential Diagnosis,” in British Medical Journal (1917), 1 , 607–612, written with Margaret W. Jepps; “Experiments on the Therapeutics of Amoebic Dysentery,” in Journal of Pharmacology, 10 (1917), 399–459, written with H. H. Dale; A Study of 1,300 Convalescent Cases of Dysentery From Home Hospitals: With Special Reference to the Incidence and Treatment of Amoebic Dysentery Carriers, Special Report Series, Medical Research Committee, no. 15 (London, 1918), 1–28, written with H. S. Gettings, M. W. Jepps, and J. B. Stephens; “A Revision of the Coccidia Parasitic in Man,” in Parasitology, 11 (1919), 147–197; The Amoebae Living in Man. A Zoological Monograph (London, 1919); The Intestinal Protozoa of Man (London, 1921), written with F. W. O’Connor; A Report on the Occurrence of Intestinal Protozoa in the Inhabitants of Britain, With Special Reference to Entamoeba histolytica, Special Report Series, Medical Research Council, no. 59 (London, 1921), 1–71, with contributions by A. H. Campbell, T. Goodey, R. C. McLean, Muriel M. Nutt, and A. G. Thacker; “The Life History and Chromosome Cycle of Aggregata eberthi (Protozoa: Sporozoa: Coccidia),” in Parasitology, 17 (1925), 1–136; “On the Cultivation of Entamoeba histolytica and Some Other Entozoic Amoebae,” ibid. 18 (1926), 283–318, written with P. P. Laidlaw; and “Researches on the Intestinal Protozoa of Monkeys and Man. I. General Introduction, and II. Description of the Whole Life-History of Entamoeba histolytica in Cultures,” ibid, 20 (1928), 357–404. This last item was the first in a series of twelve reports on his researches on the intestinal protozoa of monkeys and man that appeared in Parasitology. The last to be completed by Dobell himself was “XI. The Cytology and Life-History of Endolimax nana,” ibid., 35 (1943). 134–158. R. A. Neal completed and C. A. Hoare edited a final report from Dobell’s notes, and they published it posthumously in his name: “XII. Bacterial Factors Influencing the Life History of Entamoeba histolytica in Cultures,” ibid., 42 (1952) 16–39.

Dobell’s historical writings include tributes to Louis Joblot, C. G. Ehrenberg, T. R. Lewis, and Otto Bütschli. Among several obituaries by him the most notable are “Michał Siedlecki (1873–1940). A Founder of Modern Knowledge of the Sporozoa,” in Parasitology, 33 (1941), 1–7; and “D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948),” in Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, 6 (1949), 599–617. His biographical magnum opus was Antony van Leeuwenhoek and His “Little Animals”: Being Some Account of the Father of Protozoology Bacteriology and His Multifarious Discoveries in These Disciplines (London, 1932; repr., New York, 1958: paperback ed., New York, 1962).

II. Secondary Literature. Obituaries include G. H. Ball, “Clifford Dobell, F.R.S.: 1886–1949,” in Science, 112 (1950), 294; C. A. Hoare, “Clifford Dobell, M.A., Sc.D., F.R.S.,” in British Medical Journal (1950), 1 , 129–130; C. A. Hoare and D. L. Mackinnon, “Clifford Dobell (1886–1949),” in Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, 7 (1950), 35–61; Doris L. Mackinnon and Cecil A. Hoare, “Clifford Dobell (1886–1949), In Memoriam,” in Parasitology, 42 (1952), 1–15; W. H. van Seters, “In Memoriam: Dr. Clifford Dobell, F.R.S. (1886–1949),” in Nederlandsch Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, 94 (1950), 1274–1276; and H. E. Shortt, “Dr. Clifford Dobell, F.R.S.,” in Nature, 165 (1950), 219.

Other references to Dobell’s work and character are in C. E. Dolman, “Tidbits of Bacteriological History,” in Canadian Journal of Public Health, 53 (1962), 269–278; and in Paul de Kruif, A Sweeping Wind (New York, 1962), pp. 104–106, 111–113.

Claude E. Dolman