There’s some amazing stuff you can find when you click “random article” on Wikipedia enough times. Often, it usually brings me to a random Polish village with fewer than 1,000 people that is a complete stub with very little information on it (I don’t know why this is, I have wondered for many years now), but other times, you learn about someone or something really valuable. With all due respect to tiny Polish villages.
It’s no secret that very often, not just in trying or tumultuous times, oxygen is often sucked up by people who are ambitious with no motives beyond their own desires. It can be hard to focus on other people, or even remember that there are good people out there who have done or are doing the work and who toil to try to make things better, even if they don’t become a household name. (Although a Wikipedia article IS the first step to becoming a household name.)
Today I wanted to spotlight a British man named David Morley. He considered becoming a man of the cloth but was told he was “not bright enough” for the clergy. Pfft. Assholes. After that, he tried flying, but was similarly discouraged by assholes.
After meeting his wife and working on studies close to home about environmental and social factors surrounding the homes and living situations on children and their health, he went to Africa, and studied measles, malnutrition and correlative effects on children in Nigeria. Morley’s innovations became so well-known and so integral to child health that the WHO still considers them relevant.
After returning to the U.K., he established a charity called TALC, Teaching Aids at Low Cost, later renamed Health Books International. Its chief aim was to help transport and give books and other medical materials to areas where resources were low and child health precarious. It is still running today and by all accounts has been considered very successful with its goals. He later taught in the 1960s, and helped facilitate more education about maternal healthcare, the relationship between the mother and her child and how their health relates, and more.
Up until his retirement, he continued researching and innovating. His continued passion was defeating malnutrition and improving the lives of children. He earned quite a few awards, honors and medals, and lived to be 86, dying in 2009. It turns out being turned away from his earliest desired professions was a boon to the world at large. Cheers to David Morley. He did an incredible amount of good for the world.