| Description | Beatrice Annie Sybil Russell, often known as Sybil, was born in Edinburgh in 1895. Her father was William Russell who was the president of the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh from 1916 to 1918. Her mother Beatrice née Richie was also a physician. She studied at the extra mural school and qualified in 1919. Following this she was a house physician in Northampton then house surgeon in Bolton. In 1924 she travelled to the Gold Coast (now Ghana) where she learned the language of the Ashanti people and proceeded to work there as a consultant. She also set up training for African nurses and midwives. She took the Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and MRCP in 1929 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1939. She left the Gold Cost in 1950 and returned to Edinburgh to care for her mother. Upon her retirement she was presented with an Ashanti cloth by the community she had cared for. In the 1950s, she gave lectures, including in 1953, when she spoke on malaria to the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. She died in 1978.
Contents: correspondence of Sybil Russell, 1925-1979; testimonial to Sybil Russell on leaving the Gold Cost Colonial Medical Service, 1950. |