disease himself and made some advances in its treatment. He was invalided out of India, and travelled to the United Kingdom to recuperate in 1925. While in India he had met Mary Evelyn Greaves, and they were married at the Presbyterian Church, Marylebone, on 28 October 1925. Fairley returned to Australia in 1927 and rejoined the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. He worked there for two years, collaborating with the new director, Charles Kellaway in studies of snake venoms and with Harold Dew on the development of diagnostic tests for echinococcosis. Fairley dedicated most of 1928 to the snake venom programme, co-ordinating an enormous body of epidemiological data—including a questionnaire to Australian clinicians—on the frequency and outcome of bites by Australian elapid snakes. This work involved numerous milkings to establish typical and maximal venom yields, innovative studies of snake dentition using wax moulds, and detailed dissections to describe each species' biting apparatus. Fairley furthermore undertook in vivo studies of envenomation in a range of large animal species, to determine the efficacy of prevailing first-aid measures. He concluded that at best, ligature and local venesection might slow time to death after a significant envenomation. This reinforced the need for effective antivenenes (antivenoms) for the more dangerous local species of snakes, notably the tiger snake (Notechis scutatus), death adder (Acanthophis antarcticus) and copperhead (Austrelaps superbus), although only the former was suitable for manufacture by the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (now CSL Limited). In 1928, Fairley received an appointment in London as Assistant Physician to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and Lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Although he and Kellaway convinced the governors to delay Fairley's commencement until their major venom work was completed, he departed for London by the end of that year. He also opened a consulting practice in Harley Street. In London he encountered patients with filariasis and devised a test to diagnose the disease at an early stage; but when he went to write up his results he discovered that details of a similar test had already been published. In 1934, a sewer worker was referred to his ward with acute jaundice which Fairley diagnosed as caused by filariasis. The disease was revealed to be an occupational hazard of sewer workers, and steps were taken to protect the workers. Perhaps his most important work in this period was research into blackwater fever. Since malaria cases