Dr Cecil Evelyn Aufrere Cook (1897-1985) CBE, MD, DTMH, DPH, FRACGP, FACMA was a pioneering public health physician, a graduate of the University of Sydney in 1920. He always wanted to be a doctor like his father, but in tropical diseases not public health as his father suggested and not rural general practice, his father’s role. After graduating, Cook worked in remote Queensland and Brisbane’s Wattlebrae Infectious Diseases hospital. He later chose to work with populations and for Governments.
Devoted to public service
Dr Cecil Cook (aka Mick) was a rare public servant, an intellectual, who had expertise in seven health and medical subjects and worked in seven different agencies. In research, Cook had the Wandsworth Scholarship, the London and Sydney Schools of public health and the Townsville’s tropical medicine centre, experiences he applied in the many other research projects he completed. The Northern Territory was distinct from the Commonwealth by its remote location, distant from and largely misunderstood and neglected by the administrative authority in Canberra. Federal administration in the NHMRC was the combination of Commonwealth and state roles, which were different to each other. The overt discipline of military command made it a distinct difference to all others. Finally, after retiring from the Commonwealth, aged 65, Cook spent 12 years in the pharmaceutical industry.
From his schooling, he was a student of English, Latin, Ancient and Modern History, with an accurate vision of the future, a rational decision model and a constructive and convincing writing style. His writing sets him apart from others and its culmination in the Cook Corpus is a benefit we can now enjoy.
Cook in middle row 4th from the left
Post-graduate research
After he gained his Diploma at the London School of Tropical Medicine in 1923 the school appointed him a pathology demonstrator while he studied for his Diploma of Public Health at University College London. He won the school’s Wandsworth Scholarship for 3 years research of the Epidemiology of Leprosy in Australia, mainly among remote area Aboriginal people, for which he was awarded his Doctorate of Medicine. He was by then convinced that aboriginal ‘protection’ was a province of health, insisting that the Chief Medical Officer appointed to manage Leprosy in the Northern Territory must also be Chief Protector. In 1927, the Commonwealth appointed him to establish health, medical, protection and quarantine services in the Northern Territory, to encourage settlement of the North. In the 1930s he added malaria, anthropology and military hygiene to his specialisations.
Beyond public health
Public health was the lens through which Cook viewed all his work. He recognised early that health was more than the absence of disease and applied the ‘social determinants of health’ before that term first appeared. In the 1930s, he believed that the future of Australia’s Indigenous people’s was in their adapting to, and being accepted as members of the mainstream community. He was appointed a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1935 and received the Cilento Medal for his work in Indigenous health in 1936.
Cook at war and post-war
During WWII Cook positioned a new regime of hygiene discipline within military discipline to greatly reduce the disastrous effect of tropical diseases on troops and to contribute to significant victories. In Western Australia in the late 1940s as Public Health Commissioner, he revitalised the State’s public health department, reconnecting it with medical practitioners. Other States later adopted this model. He addressed the poliomyelitis epidemic in Western Australia in the 1940s and led a national campaign in epidemic control in the 1950s. As the State’s Chief Health Officer, Cook joined the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and its Tropical Physiology and Hygiene Committee.
For the Commonwealth
At the Commonwealth Department of Health in Canberra from 1950, Cook worked with Health and Native Welfare functions to coordinate their policies and services. Through the NHMRC and with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners he built a bridge between public health and general medical practice. His work with the NHMRC (1946–69) included many foundational projects, such as redefining public health, vaccinating for and treating poliomyelitis, linking tobacco smoking and lung cancer, setting standards for food additives and quality, and reducing the incidence of infant mortality, especially from stillbirths. He retired from Commonwealth Health in 1962.
Not the retiring type
Cook was immediately recruited as a medical consultant by Abbott Australia, a U.S.-based pharmaceutical company which developed erythromycin, a ‘wonder’ antibiotic. They needed Cook’s experience with the NHMRC and other health agencies to gain its acceptance, a complex challenge that took more than a decade. He retired from Abbott in 1978, aged 81.