This very readable and well illustrated book outlines the medical career of a physician who undertook a series of assignments in tropical countries between 1960 and 1990: Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, Saudi Arabia and Papua New Guinea. Having thus obtained considerable experience of, and made significant contributions to, 'medicine in the tropics', he was later appointed to London's Hospital for Tropical Diseases, and there saw and contributed to, the formal discipline of tropical medicine (which originated in the late nineteenth century) in the latter years of the twentieth century.This unique account, outlined in this fascinating narrative, covers more than seven decades, four of which were devoted to tropical diseases, seen in warm climates and also Britain.Now that the majority of developing countries possess their own medical school and graduates, it is most unlikely that this kind of itinerant and exciting career will be repeated.About the author: Professor Gordon Cook, DSc, MD, FRCP was born in the early 1930s into a lower middle-class family in South London, where he lived during that decade and much of the Blitz of 1940. During and after the Second World War (1939-45) he underwent a somewhat peripatetic grammar school education, and decided to make medicine his career.Following junior appointments in medicine, he undertook National Service as a captain in the Royal Nigerian Army at Yaba, Lagos. He subsequently became a Lecturer at Mekerare University College, Uganda, and occupied the Chairs of Medicine at the University of Zambia, Riyadh, (Saudi Arabia) and Papua New Guinea. He was also an invited Visiting Professor at the Universities of Basra and Mosel, Iraq, and Qatar.