Rollo Russell | |
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 Russell in the 1890s | |
| Born | Francis Albert Rollo Russell (1849-07-11)11 July 1849 Pembroke Lodge, Richmond Park, England |
| Died | 30 March 1914(1914-03-30) (aged 64) Holland Street, Kensington,London, England |
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| Children | 3 |
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| Relatives | Bertrand Russell (nephew) |
Francis Albert Rollo Russell (11 July 1849 – 30 March 1914) was an Englishmeteorologist and scientific writer. Russell was also analternative cancer treatment advocate who promoted the idea that cancer is caused by excessive consumption ofmeat,alcohol,coffee andtea.
Russell was born atPembroke Lodge, Richmond Park.[1] He was the third son of then-servingPrime MinisterLord John Russell and was the uncle ofBertrand Russell.[2] His mother was Lord Russell's second wife,Lady Frances. Russell was educated atChrist Church, Oxford and graduated with distinction in natural science in 1872.[3] He worked as clerk for theBritish Foreign Office. Russell was reclusive and a shy man.[3][4] He suffered from poor eyesight, resigned from the British Civil Service in 1888 and took up scientific writing.[3] He studied the relationship between atmosphere and disease.[5]
Russell married Alice Sophia Godfrey in 1885; they had a son Arthur.[6][3] She died within a year and Russell married Gertrude Ellen Cornelia Joachim (sister ofHarold H. Joachim) in 1891.[3][7] They had a son John and a daughter Margaret.[3] Russell was aUnitarian and a founding member of the Unitarian Christian Church inRichmond, in 1888.[8] Russell has been described as an "advocate ofvegetarianism".[9]
TheNature journal positively reviewed Russell'sEpidemics, Plagues and Fevers as a valuable service topublic health for collecting important facts concerning preventable diseases.[10]
Bertrand Russell in his autobiography noted that Rollo Russell stimulated his scientific interests.[11] He wrote that Rollo Russell "suffered all his life from a morbid shyness so intense as to prevent him from achieving anything that involved contact with other human beings. But with me, so long as I was a child, he was not shy, and he used to display a vein of droll humour of which adults would not have suspected in him."[11]
Russell died atHolland Street, Kensington fromsepticaemia.[12] He is buried in the churchyard atSteep, Hampshire.[13]
Russell contributed to theQuarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society andSymon's Meteorological Magazine. He authored an influential pamphletLondon Fogs, in 1880,in which he argued that "smoke in London has continued probably for many years to shorten the lives of thousands". It was a prophetic warning, more than 70 years before theGreat London Smog of 1952 killed an estimated 12,000 people.[2][4][14] Apart from documenting the effects of fog on health, such as lung diseases, it also listed the damage caused to buildings and monuments.[4]
Russell became a Fellow of theRoyal Meteorological Society in 1868. He served on the council from 1879 to 1892 and in 1914, and was Vice-President 1893–1894.[15] He co-authored an important meteorological paper on the global effects of the1883 eruption of Krakatoa. His paper,On the Unusual Optical Phenomena of the Atmosphere, 1883–1886 co-authored with E. Douglas Archibald was published in the volumeThe Eruption of Krakatoa and Subsequent Phenomena by the Krakatoa Committee of the Royal Society.
Russell argued from medical literature and statistical data thatcancer is prevalent in communities wheremeat,alcohol,coffee andtea are excessively consumed.[16][17][18][19] He recommended that governments should educate the public in restricting the consumption of these products as they increase the occurrence of cancer.[17] In his bookNotes on the Causation of Cancer, Russell commented that "I have found of twenty-five nations eating flesh largely, nineteen had a high cancer rate and only one had a low rate, and that of thirty-five nations eating little or no flesh, none had a high rate."[20]
Russell examined cancer incidence and mortality inBenedictine andCistercian monasteries. The monks abstained from meat or it only consisted of a small part of their diet.[9] Russell found that the monks had a lower rate of cancer mortality compared to the general population and this confirmed the health benefits of a vegetarian diet. His statistical data was criticized bySydney Copeman andMajor Greenwood for lacking precision.[9] In 1926, Copeman and Greenwood commented that:
It was, of course, obvious that his statistical evidence lacked precision; the age distributions and exact numbers of those exposed to risk were not available, and the evidence that deaths from cancer had really not occurred was hardly conclusive. But the author was, in our opinion, working on the right lines and had gone as far as a non-medical writer without special facilities for the consultation of official unpublished statistics would be able to go.[21]
Russell'sNotes on the Causation of Cancer received a mixed reception from the medical community. A review in theMedical Record disagreed with Russell that excessive alcohol or meat consumption causes cancer and concluded that the book "cannot be recommended as authoritative either to the lay public or to the medical profession."[22] However, a review in theNew York Medical Journal found his arguments valid and suggested that the book "demand[ed] the attention of the medical profession."[23] A positive review inThe New England Journal of Medicine stated that "though doubtless not conclusive, such a work is of value as a contribution to the study and ultimate solution of the great problem."[24]
His bookPreventable Cancer was positively reviewed in theJournal of the American Medical Association, which concluded that "many interesting facts, figures and opinions on cancer are collected and set forth in this book."[19] Conversely, theNew York Medical Journal attacked his statements as inaccurate and dismissed the book because Russell was not qualified in medicine.[25] A review in theNature journal criticized the book, noting that "Mr. Russell has made the mistake of comparing statistics which are no way comparable."[26] However, statisticianFrederick Ludwig Hoffman positively reviewed the book, commenting that it contained "some exceptionally valuable observations on the relation of diet to cancer frequency, the temperature of food, the increase of excessive alimentation, and a rough outline of certain supposed factors accountable for cancer occurrence."[27]
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