were uncommon in the United Kingdom, he made annual visits to the Malaria Research Laboratory of the League of Nations at the Refugee Hospital in Salonika. In the process, he described methaemalbumin, a previously unknown blood pigment. For his scientific accomplishments in London, Fairley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1942. Second World War Middle East With the outbreak of the Second World War, the Australian Army's director general of medical services, Major General Rupert Downes tapped Fairley as consulting physician. Fairley was seconded to the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF) with the rank of colonel on 15 July 1940 and given the serial number VX38970. He joined the AIF Headquarters in Cairo in September, taking advantage of the initial quiet period to familiarise himself with the AIF's medical units and their commanders. As the British Army in the Middle East had no consulting physician in tropical diseases, Fairley accepted an offer to act in this capacity as well. In January 1941 the British Army began planning for operations in Greece. Fairley and his British colleague, Colonel J. S. K. Boyd, the consulting pathologist, drafted a medical appreciation. Drawing on the experience of the Salonika front in the First World War, where very heavy casualties suffered from malaria, plus Fairley's more recent experience in that part of the world, they painted a gloomy picture, emphasising the grave risks, and going so far as to suggest that the Germans might attempt to entice the allies into a summer campaign in which they could be destroyed by malaria. The British Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Archibald Wavell decried their report as "typical of a very non-medical and non-military spirit", but a face-to-face meeting with Boyd and Fairley convinced Wavell that they were serious and not merely uncooperative, and Wavell promised his assistance in mitigating the danger. The campaign plan was altered to position allied forces further south, away from the plains of Macedonia and the Vardar and Struma River basins, where malaria was hyper-endemic and heavy casualties had been suffered from malaria by British troops during the First World War. Fairley tackled an outbreak of bacilliary dysentery among the troops in Egypt. In most cases the patients recovered of their own accord but some cases of shigellosis became seriously ill and died. Fairley had some Shiga anti-toxin with him, but it proved ineffective in serious cases, even when administered in large