Douglas Macmillan MBE (10 August 1884 – 9 January 1969) was a British civil servant, vegetarianism activist and founder of the Macmillan Cancer Support charity, now one of the largest charities in the UK.
Early life and education
He was born on 10 August 1884, in Castle Cary, Somerset, England, the seventh of eight children of William Macmillan (1844–1911) and his wife Emily, formerly White (1843–1937). His father became managing director of John Boyd & Co. (manufacturers of horsehair-based products), was a Somerset County Alderman, and for fifteen years edited and published the monthly Castle Cary Visitor.
He was educated at Sexey's School, Bruton (1894–1897), the Quaker Sidcot School, Winscombe (1897–1901), and then at Birkbeck, University of London in 1901.
Career
Macmillan entered the civil service in London in 1902. He worked as a civil servant for more than forty years – in the Board of Agriculture and later in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. He retired as a staff officer in 1945, having been made MBE, for his government service, the previous year. He specialized in public health and was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Public Health and Hygiene. He was a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.
He was prominent in the affairs of the Society of Somerset Folk in London, founding and chairing its Arts Circle which promoted interest in folklore and dialect, drama, literature and music. He edited the Society's journal, the Somerset Year Book, from 1921 to 1932 and was Director of its London-based publishing arm, Folk Press Ltd. Among Folk Press's numerous publications in the 1920s were several monographs on historical topics by Macmillan and two volumes of his poetry (Sea Drift and By Camel and Cary) which contain verses celebrating some of the districts that lie along the route now known as the Macmillan Way West.
Cancer charity
Macmillan was a Baptist but also influenced by Quakerism. He published the magazine The Better Quest in 1911 "devoted to truth and humaneness" which supported animal welfare and Christian vegetarianism. In March 1911, Macmillan authored an article "In Cancer's Clutch" which suggested that "cancer is the fault of sin". Macmillan argued that meat eating was a major cause of cancer and the first chapter of the Book of Genesis supported a vegetarian way of life. He was a staunch anti-vivisectionist and believed that good health was linked to Godliness and thus opposed conventional cancer treatments that took research from animal experimentation.
In July, 1911 Macmillan's father died of cancer. This made a profound impression on him. The following year, despite having no medical background himself, he set up the Society for the Prevention and Relief of Cancer, with a donation of £10. The aim was to establish what caused cancer and how best to treat it. In founding the Society, Macmillan "wanted to see homes for cancer patients throughout the land, where attention will be provided freely or at low cost, as circumstances dictate... [and]... panels of voluntary nurses who can be detailed off to attend to necessitous patients in their own homes."
His Society was strictly anti-vivisectionist. In the Society's first publication, Macmillan stated that the new organization "had no connection or any sympathy whatever with existing systems of cancer research, the representatives of which appear to be persuaded that "research" means "vivisection". In a 1912 leaflet for his Society he argued that the cause of cancer was known and that the one reasonable and reliable treatment was also known but was denied by medical and surgical orthodoxy. He stated that the cure and treatment of cancer could be found with the application of vegetarian dietetic principles rather than the surgeon's knife. The first annual meeting for the Society for the Prevention and Relief of Cancer was held on 12 December 1912 at Macmillan's house in Belgravia. In 1912, Charles W. Forward was elected Chairman of the Society. Members included Frederic Cardew, Robert Bell (who became president), the Duchess of Hamilton (the first patron) and Vice-presidents Lord Charles Beresford, Roy Horniman, George William Kekewich, Sir John Kirk and Lizzy Lind af Hageby. Medical practitioners that were elected included Charles Reinhardt, H. Fergie Woods and J. Stenson Hooker. In 1912, the Society had 44 members.