There is no doubt at all that the most distinguished contribution made by a Trinidadian to the world of tropical medicine was made by Dr. Joseph Lennox Pawan. In the field of medico-scientific research Dr. Pawan stands out for having made a discovery that dramatically altered a most distressing health situation in Trinidad.

Dr. Pawan, who was born in Port-of-Spain in 1887, began this great work in the early 1930s. This was towards the solution of a problem that had significance all over the tropical world, but was particularly relevant to the Trinidad of the time. Medical circles here and all over the world were in a state of alarm, and crying aloud for a solution to the problem. The problem was a virus, paralytic and deadly, which attacked people, none knew from which source. The attack gave rise to a sickness that was extremely virulent, causing death in just a few days.

The disease carried symptoms which pointed to rabies but since the rabies virus was known to be transmitted by dogs, and none of the cases had nay history of dog-bites, it was at first not diagnosed as rabies at all, but instead as poliomyelitis.

This incidence of paralytic rabies first came to attention in Trinidad in 1925 when scores of cattle on the Mucurapo Pasture in Port-of-Spain, and also in pastures at St Ann's, became infected and died within a few days. This disease that the cattle contracted was described as botulism.

Doctors and scientific researchers carried out frantic experiments to try to control the disease, but in 1929, while so engaged, a most alarming development took place. In Siparia that year 13 people fell victim to the disease and died. This disease they died of was now being described as acutely spreading paralysis.

The next year, 1930, three more cases were recorded, and one case occurred in 1931. In every instance the patients died within a few days of first feeling the symptoms.

There was consternation in medical circles. Experiments confirmed that the disease resulted from the virus of rabies, but there was no light on where it came from. Apart from the fact that none of the victims had been attacked by dogs, no case of rabies had been identified in Trinidad since 1914.

Dr. Pawan, then the Government bacteriologist, together with medical colleagues J.A. Waterman and H.M.V. Metivier, worked frantically, trying to solve what seemed a riddle. Feeling certain that the disease that had attacked human beings in Siparia in 1929, 1930 and 1931, was the same as that which had attacked the cattle in 1925, Dr. Pawan began studying those cases again. He was as baffled as ever. But there was one thing that struck him - one ray of light that seemed to brighten the dark corners of his research. A woman patient told him that one-month before her illness she had awakened from her sleep to find a bat biting her under her big toe. She said she had thought no more about it and had not mentioned it.

The fact was, as Dr. Pawan well knew, that bat-bites were very common in the country districts, and apparently nothing happened as a result of them. However, it was that same toe that started the trouble. The woman became very ill and died within a few days.

It was then that Dr. Pawan began his intense observations of bats, and he luckily obtained one found near a paralyzed cow. He conducted tests on the bat, and drawing a liquid emulsion from its brain, he inoculated a monkey and several rabbits with the substance.

Then followed the sign of a great break-through. He must have wanted to should "Eureka!" For the rabbits all died within a short space of time, and the monkey, surviving with an abscess, developed rabies within a few weeks.

Dr. Pawan, although jubilant, was calm enough to temper excitement with caution. Writing in that years, 1931, on the subject of the outbreak of rabies, he said, "The opinion that the vector (carrier) may be the vampire bat, is tentatively expressed."

But this began a period when Dr. Pawan devoted almost total attention to the activities and condition of vampire bats. However, to confuse the issue, it was not only the blood-sucking vampire bat, (Desmodus Rufus), that seemed to be transmitting the disease.

In his experiments, which involved hundreds of bats, Dr. Pawan found that quite a number of the fruit-eating bats were capable of transmitting the rabies virus. And he discovered something that even now has not been fully appreciated, except in medical circles. It was this - the disease transmitted was not a bat disease. The bats were themselves infected. In fact there were many cases where infected bats contracted paralysis and died. But the puzzling thing was that most of the other infected bats showed no signs of illness, so it was impossible to know which were carriers and which were not. This led to the mass destruction of bats.

Dr. Pawan, extremely thorough, continued his experiments to make absolutely sure that the dreaded virus was of the classical rabies, and that bats alone were the transmitters of this disease. He made meticulous notes on patients affected, sometimes outlining the salient points, as in the following note: "Case one: admitted on August 20, 1930. Complete paralysis in both legs. Profuse sweating. Death on 24^th."

Also, working in his small and simply-equipped laboratory at the Colonial Hospital (now called the General Hospital) he continued his tests and experiments on bats, and in September 1931, after constant and exhaustive work, he was at last able to demonstrate the rabies virus, found in the brain of a vampire bat.

This was the high point and the climax of this great and painstaking quest. The fact that the rabies virus was transmitted by bats was a most remarkable discovery, and Dr. Lennox Pawan had made a distinguished contribution, not only to Trinidad medicine but to the whole of the medical world.

Still, doctors wanted to know how it was that bats could transmit a disease that was definitely a canine disease - a disease that came from dogs and wolves. Consequently, through investigations in Trinidad and abroad the most curious facts came to light.

It had been known that the disease, which had destroyed cattle here in 1925, had appeared in the Brazilian State of Santa Catarina in 1906. Now, owing to Dr. Pawan's discovery, it was disclosed that in one of the remote Santa Catarina villages in 1906 a dog had bitten a bat. Although no notice had been taken of this at the time, the bat had infected other bats, and they infected and destroyed cattle there, too.

After several years, infected bats flew north to Venezuela. In 1925 there were actually eyewitness accounts of bats crossing over from the mainland - even before the disease had struck - and of course before the bat had been associated with the disease.

Thus it was proved beyond a doubt that the disease was transmitted here through bats, but also that it did come from a dog in the first place. Dr. Lennox Pawan, whose monumental work led to the discovery and isolation f the rabies virus became recognized all over the world as one of the salient figures in the history of medical research.

Dr. Pawan was 44 years old at this time. His success had crowned a brilliant period of study, which had begun at St Mary's College in Port-of-Spain, from which institution he had won an Island Scholarship - the only one offered in the year 1907.

In 1907 Dr. Pawan entered Edinburgh University, from which he graduated in 1912 with the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. From 1913 to 1916 he was Assistant Surgeon at the Colonial Hospital, and during the next three years he was District medical Officer at Tobago. He filled the same post at Cedros from 1919 to 1922.

In 1923 he gained the Diploma of Public Health, and later that year was appointed bacteriologist to the Government of Trinidad and Tobago. For his discovery of the rabies virus in 1931, Dr. Pawan, in 1934, received the award of Member of the British Empire (MBE). In 1954 he received the outstanding honour of being made consultant on rabies to the United States Government, and in the same year he was invited to become Chairman of the World Health Organization - but this he declined on account of ill health.

Dr. Pawan served the Government not only as a bacteriologist, but as a pathologist too, and also carried out all manner of assignments in the public service, especially in Public Health, and Medico-legal work. He was also connected, during the 1940s, with work on tuberculosis, malaria, and a number of tropical diseases.

This hero of the people, who had contributed so much in trying to better the health situation in this country, was himself plagued by ill-health throughout his later life. His fatal illness came soon after his retirement in early 1953. It was a long illness, causing him to lie bedridden at an Abercromby Street nursing home for more than a year. Dr. Joseph Lennox Pawan died on November 3, 1957.