Whatever Happened to . . .
Dr. David Livingstone?

Died 1 May 1873 in Barotseland (now Zambia). This was more than a year after reporter/traveler Henry Morton Stanley, at the behest of American publisher James Gordon Bennett, located him in the African wilds and extended that classic tongue-in-cheek British greeting: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Scotland, in 1813. He grew up a devout Calvinist and a determined toiler (at 10, he signed on in a cotton mill to help his family make ends meet). In his early 20s, he answered the call put forth by churches in England and America for medical missionaries. Livingstone prepared himself by studying medicine, theology and classical subjects for two years in Glasgow.

His intention was to serve in China, and it was with the Orient in mind that he conducted his studies. The London Missionary Society accepted him in 1838, but foreign complications of the day—notably the Opium War—shut the door to the China mission field. A veteran Scottish missionary named Robert Moffat persuaded Livingstone that Africa needed him, so early 1841 found him aboard a ship bound for Capetown.

The young Scot spent the next 15 years in the interior. He became not only a respected missionary, but a pioneering explorer and staunch enemy of slave traders. His probes of remote regions where no white man had gone before won him a medal from the Royal Geographical Society in 1849. But it wasn't medals that interested him. Livingstone lived to investigate unknown rivers, lakes and mountains, and to spread the Gospel. His writings became internationally popular; Missionary Researches and Travels in South Africa (1857) sold more than 70,000 copies—the equivalent of today's multimillion-volume sellers.

Later expeditions took Livingtone over much of the lower African continent. His final and most famous effort was his search for the source of the River Nile, beginning in 1866. This time he made new discoveries, including lakes Mweru and Bangweulu. The journey was extremely difficult at times. Livingstone suffered from illnesses, and the mission was jeopardized by a deserter who made off with the medicine chest.

By 1870, the outside world was wondering where the famous missionary-explorer was, and how he was faring. Bennett of the New York Herald commissioned the British-born Stanley, an ambitious traveler, explorer and journalist, to go find him. Stanley succeeded, arriving at the encampment of the ailing Livingstone on the edge of Lake Tanganyika. Stanley failed to persuade him to return to Europe. So in March 1872, Stanley left Livingtone with a store of supplies and returned himself to file his famous chronicle.

Livingstone strove to continue his search for the Nile headwaters, but his energy was spent. African members of his party found him dead, kneeling prayerfully beside his bed. The precise cause of death possibly was critically bleeding hemorrhoids which had worsened over the period of a decade. Livingstone, eager to return to his work, had declined to undergo corrective surgery while in England in 1865.

The natives reverently buried his heart, embalmed his body and laboriously carried the remains to the continent's eastern coast. The corpse eventually was shipped to England and buried at Westminster Abbey.

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