21st August 1835
Mapmaking geologist John MacCulloch died
Guernsey-born John MacCulloch is credited with introducing the word “malaria” into the English language.
His lengthy essay on the illness didn’t entirely pin the blame on mosquitos. He wrote, “this is the unseen, and still unknown poison to which Italy applies the term that I have borrowed, Malaria”.
He described it as an “unknown agent of disease [to which] the term marsh miasma has been applied” because it was common among the “lower orders” of people – likely to work the land – in “France, Italy, Holland and elsewhere, and not less known to at least our own rural population… since every labourer in Lincolnshire or Essex believes that his ague is the produce of the fens”.
However, aside from that addition to the English language, his greatest contribution to our understanding of the world around us was his surveying and map-making.
A life on the mainland
As his name would suggest, MacCulloch was half Scottish. The rest of him was Sarnian, but he didn’t spend much of his life on Guernsey. After qualifying as a medical doctor in Edinburgh, he joined the Geological Society of London. He also taught at the Royal Military Academy.
In 1811, aged 38, he wrote a paper on the geological structure of Guernsey. The subject matter hinted at the field of interest which would consume much of the rest of his life.
He moved to Scotland to perform a wide range of geological surveys and experiments. There, he produced an extensive “Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, including the Isle of Man”.
In 1826 the government contracted him to draw up a geological map of Scotland. This task consumed every summer from them until his death in 1835. Although he completed the task just before he died, it wasn’t published until the following year.
He was 61 when he died in hospital in Cornwall, having broken his leg on his honeymoon. The leg had had to be amputated and he succumbed a few days later.
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Other events that occured in August
Guernsey’s Reform Law was enacted
- The Reform Law set out in detail how Guernsey's political system would work.
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A boy scout fell 250ft over a Torteval Cliff
- The scout had been trying to rescue his friend, who had slipped when retrieving a hat.
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The Saumarez Memorial foundation stone was laid
- The memorial was later destroyed by the German occupying forces
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A tomato ship and a tanker collided
- A Guernsey tomato ship was sunk when it struck a Liberian tanker
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