the University of Melbourne, and later as a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians; he became senior physician at Royal Melbourne Hospital. A third son became a general practitioner. Neil was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne, where he was dux of his class. He attended the University of Melbourne, graduating with his Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery with first class honours in 1915, and his Doctor of Medicine in 1917. While there, he won the Australian inter-varsity high jumping championship and represented Victoria in tennis. First World War Fairley joined the Australian Army Medical Corps with the rank of captain on 1 August 1915 and was posted to Royal Melbourne Hospital as a resident medical officer. He investigated an epidemic of meningitis that was occurring in local Army camps, and his first published paper was an analysis of this disease, documenting fifty cases. In 1916, he co-authored a monograph published by the federal government detailing 644 cases, of which 338 (52%) were fatal (before the invention of antibiotic drugs). Fairley enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 24 August 1916. On 5 September 1916, he embarked for Egypt on RMS Kashgar, joining the 14th General Hospital in Cairo. There he encountered Major Charles Martin, formerly Professor of Physiology at the University of Melbourne and Director of the Lister Institute from 1903 to 1930. At this time, Martin was working as a Consulting Physician to the AIF in Egypt and commanded the Anzac Field Laboratory. While in Egypt, Fairley investigated schistosomiasis (then known as bilharzia). The disease was known to be caused by contact with fresh water inhabited by certain species of snails, and orders had been issued that prohibited bathing in fresh water, but the troops were slow to appreciate the danger involved. In its toxic phase, the disease was easily confused with typhus, so Fairley developed a complement fixation test for the disease along the lines of the Wassermann test. He studied its pathology, confirming that the worms in the circulatory system could be cured by intravenous tartaric acid. Fairley also studied, and later published papers on typhus, malaria, and bacillary dysentery. Fairley married Staff Nurse Violet May Phillips at the Garrison Church, Abbassia, Cairo on 12 February 1919. They divorced on 21 November 1924. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on 15 March 1919 and commanded