Lionel Everard Napier

L. Everard Napier (9 October 1888, Preston, Lancashire – 15 December 1957, Silchester, Hampshire) was a British tropical physician and professor of tropical medicine, known for his 1946 textbook Principles and Practice of Tropical Medicine and his 1923 book, coauthored by Ernest Muir, Kala Azar: A Handbook for Students and Practitioners.

Napier graduated from St John's School, Leatherhead and then studied medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital, qualifying M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. in 1914. From 1915 to 1918 he served in the R.A.M.C. He served in the Mediterranean and in Egypt, in hospital ships and troop transports, and then in Mesopotamia, where he succeeded Hugh W. Acton as pathologist. During WWI Napier also served in Bombay, where he succeeded Robert Knowles as pathologist, and then returned to England in 1919. Acton and Knowles became professors at the newly formed School of Tropical of Medicine at Calcutta and persuaded Knowles to join the staff as a pathologist and special research worker in kala-azar. Ernest Struthers and Napier advanced the hypothesis that the sand-fly transmitted kala-azar. He remained at Calcutta's School of Tropical Medicine for 22 years, he became editor of the Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Awards and honours 1940 — Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians 1942 — Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire