The life and work of Sir Albert Cook-Mengo Hospital Supplement

By Elvis Basudde
Sir Albert Ruskin Cook, (1870–1951) was a British born medical missionary in Uganda and founder of Mulago and Mengo Hospitals. Together with his wife, Katherine Cook (1863–1938), he established a maternity training school in Uganda.

Albert Cook was born in Hampstead, London in 1870. His parents were Dr. W.H. Cook and Harriet Bickersteth Cook. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1893 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1895 with a Bachelor of Medicine.

Cook became a doctor of Medicine in 1901. In 1896, he went to Uganda with Church Missionary Society mission, and in 1897, he established Mengo Hospital, the oldest hospital in East Africa. He married Katharine Timpson, a missionary nurse, in 1900, with whom he had two daughters and a son.

Katharine Timpson, who later became Lady Katharine Lady, was a matron of Mengo Hospital between 1897–1911, the general superintendent of midwives and inspector of country centres. She was involved in the foundation of the Lady Coryndon Maternity Training School and founded the Nurses Training College in 1931.

Cook is outstanding among medical missionaries for his efforts to train Africans to become skilled medical workers. He and his wife opened a school for midwives at Mengo and authored a manual of midwifery in Ganda, the local language, titled Amagezi Agokuzalisa, published by Sheldon Press, London.

Cook started training African Medical Assistants at Mulago during the First World War and in the 1920s, he encouraged the opening of a medical college that initially trained Africans to the level defined by the colonial government as “Asian sub-assistant surgeon”. The school grew to become a fully-fledged medical school in his lifetime.

He established a treatment centre for the venereal diseases and sleeping sickness in 1913, which later became Mulago Hospital. He was president of the Uganda Branch of the British Medical Association (BMA) between 1914 and 1918, during which time he founded a school for African medical assistants.