Egbert Morland came of Quaker stock. He was the fifth son of Charles Coleby Morland, J.P., who had married Jane Fryer, and was educated at Whitgift School, Croydon, Bootham School, York, and Owens College, Manchester. He seemed set for a brilliant career in consulting practice when he was forced to seek treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis; he had taken his B.Sc, with first class honours in zoology, entered St. Bartholomew’s Hospital with a senior scholarship, and graduated M.B. with the gold medal in physiology. He had to give up his house appointments, but he made a special study of tuberculosis and in 1902 with an architect brother won third prize in the competition for the building of King Edward VII Sanatorium, Midhurst.

After convalescence in Switzerland he decided to practise there, taking the Swiss federal diploma in 1907. For the next seven years he directed the Villa Gentiana, an English sanatorium in Arosa, until in 1915 he joined a relief unit of the Society of Friends on the Marne. But before leaving Arosa he had sent an article to The Lancet on the food supply of the German people (1915, 1, 389-99), and this was the beginning of an association with the journal that lasted twenty-nine years, the last seven as editor.

To his work as a journalist Morland brought the qualities of a scientist, an artist, and a linguist with an expert knowledge of French and German. Quick to detect the new and interesting in home and foreign journals, his leaders were always up-to-date and never dull, while his interest in what is now called social medicine renewed the reformist tradition of The Lancet. While still assistant editor he also edited Maternity and Child Welfare from 1917 to 1934.

In 1903 he married Mary Windsor, only daughter of Joseph Latchmore, of Headingley, Leeds.

Richard R Trail

* He was elected under the special bye-law which provides for the election to the fellowship of "Persons holding a medical qualification, but not Members of the College, who have distinguished themselves in the practice of medicine, or in the pursuit of Medical or General Science or Literature..."

[Brit.med.J., 1955, 1, 1159-61 (p); Lancet, 1955, 1, 974-6 (p), 1030-31; Times, 27 Apr. 1955.]