Andrew George Malcolm

Andrew George Malcolm (1818–1856) was an Irish medical doctor and medical historian, who was employed by the General Hospital in Belfast. He has been called the "earliest respiratory physiologist" of the hospital. Today, he is mostly known for his reports on the sanitary state of Belfast and particularly for his History of the General Hospital. Malcolm is also considered to be the "first historian" of Belfast General Hospital. At the end of his schooling at Inst he had been assistant to Henry Montgomery, the famous headmaster of the English department and his father's successor at Dunmurry.

Writings While Malcolm wrote both medical and historical texts, he is primarily known for his historical writing and his records, which remain valuable historical sources today. During his time at the hospital, Malcolm wrote many reports on the sanitary state of Belfast. His reports were the result of several years of study of the housing, the water-courses, the sewers and drains of Belfast, the water supply, and the statistics or estimates of disease and mortality, some of which he had to compile for himself. Malcolm also published a statistical paper on the Influence of Factory Life on the Health of the Operatives, showing the harmful effect of flax dust on the lungs of the workers, and pleading for improvements in factory hygiene. There are two other major reports, among numerous lesser papers, one on the Asiatic cholera in Belfast (there were only 84 cases and Malcolm regretted the paucity of numbers) and one on the epidemic dysentery in the north of Ireland. In 1851 he published his History of the General Hospital at Belfast, which has become a valuable resource for the study of the sanitary state of Belfast during the famine.