David Douglas Cunningham

David Douglas Cunningham CIE FRS FZS FLS (29 September 1843 – 31 December 1914) was a Scottish medical doctor and researcher who worked extensively in India on various aspects of public health and medicine.

[3] He entered the Indian Medical Service in 1868, and was selected to conduct a special enquiry into cholera by the Secretaries of State for India and for War.

In addition there were questions on whether the two theories may both hold and that cholera was caused by a fungus-like organism that produced spores that would be distributed in the air.

Their official work however did not progress and the project was terminated and in 1879, Cunningham took up an academic position as Professor of Physiology at the Calcutta Medical College.

A committee made up of two leading pathologists, Heneage Gibbes and Emanuel Klein, was set up and they visited Calcutta in November 1884.

Cunningham worked with Klein, helping obtain samples from the same water storage which Koch had declared as being the source of the contagion affecting victims.

The ensuing debate on the financial losses that would be caused led to the British government's decision to increase spending on research facilities and in December 1884, the Sanitary Commissioner was granted 15,000 rupees to set up a laboratory with Cunningham being made the director.

[12] A species of Gymnosporangium fungus, G. cunninghamianum was named after him by Major A. Barclay in 1890, who found it in Simla but received illustrations matching them made by Cunningham from Almora in 1874.

He was appointed Honorary Physician to George V.[11] He was unmarried, and died on 31 December 1914 at his home in Torre Mount, Torquay.