Any consideration of this great New African intellectual, who was a medical doctor, raises the question of the noble and majestic role of African medical practitioners in the cultural, social and political history of South Africa. The extraordinary role of medical doctors in the formation of South African modernity, from Abdullah Abdurahman (1872-1940) through Yusuf Dadoo (1909-83) to James Lowell Zwelinzima Njongwe (1919-? [in 1977 still alive]), still needs to be written. Such a book will need to consider other oustanding figures such as Alfred Bitini Xuma (1893-1962) and William Frederick Nkomo (1915-72). In fact, another different book, from the first black medical doctor in South Africa John Mavuma Nembula (1861-97) to the medical practitioner aspirant Steve Biko (194? -77), modelled on Henry Sigerist's The Great Doctors: A Biographical History of Medicine (1933) still needs also to be written. If such books were to see the light of day, there would be little doubt that Silas Modiri Molema would occupy a very prominent role in them. Molema was a medical doctor with very formidable intellectual powers. A near intellectual masterpiece of his, The Bantu: Past and Present (1920), testifies to this astonishing intellect. It may be because of this recognition that H. I. E. Dhlomo included Molema in the stellar line-up of New African Talented Tenth together with Solomon T. Plaatje, R. V. Selope Thema, Pixley ka Isaka Seme and others ("Great Pioneers of the Movement", Ilanga lase Natal, June 30, 1951). Although together with the other medical doctor, A. B. Xuma, Silas Modiri Molema, played a fundamental role in the 1940s in modernizing the ANC, in this brief sketch we will consider his intellectual prowess rather than his political practice. Perhaps the following quotation is as good as any in indicating his historical vision: "Looking to those things as evidences of spiritual rebirth, and invoking that moral growth and a higher appraisement of the ethical ideal by the world in general, and by South Africa in particular, we may conclude by saying the day will come, and is perhaps not far distant, when the Black man in South Africa, the African, the Native will be accorded political equality with the White man and will sit side by side with him in national councils and in the Legislative Assembly for the common good of a South African Nationhood" ("The African: Present and Future Political Representation", Race Relations Journal, vol. 17 no. 3 & 4, 1950). As for Molema the literary stylist, this passage from his posthumously published book will do: "These sections or branches of the Barolong tribe originate from one common stem and their chiefs descend from one man---Tau, who was king of one great Barolong tribe in former times. These former times are, however, near enough to leave us in no doubt about the rank and orecedence according to seniority of birth of the Chiefs, that order of precedence according to seniority being derived from the order of the sons of Tau and perpetuated in their progeny, and that order being Ratlou, Tshidi, Makgetla, Seleka, Rapulana, represented at present by their offspring in Moshete, Montshiwa, Phetlhu, Moroka and Matlaba respectively" (Montshiwa 1815-1896 [1966]). Molema's practice as a historian seems to have been influenced by Thomas Caryle's philosophy of history. Concerning this seminal influence, both Molema and Dhlomo had deep affinities than each realized. Although Silas Modiri Molema wrote books concerned with ethnological and historical matters, his second book was centrally about preventive social medicine: Life & Health (1924). It was enthusiastically welcomed on its first appearance by the New African intellectuals on the pages of Ilanga lase Natal : "The language is quite simple and not above the majority of the common readers. If the Natives are to progress they must have such knowledge as is given in this little book so that they may know how to conduct themselves in the midst of the glare of civilization with its many pitfalls to the unwary" (July 25, 1924). A public health book given such favourale assessment would have met with the approval of the great Swiss medical historian Henry Sigerist. One wonders whether Sigerist and Molema met each other when the European scholar then based in United States visited South Africa on a lecture tour in 1939. In preparation for the trip, it is almost certain that Sigerist read Molema's Life & Health. In On the Sociology of Medicine, Henry Sigerist articulates his conception of the practice of medicine that not only Silas Modiri Molema would have concurred with, but also most if not all the New African medical doctors would have endorsed: "One ought not forget, however, that medicine is not a pure science. Its goal is not to enlarge the sphere of its understanding of nature. Medicine is an applied science, with an eminently practical goal. . . Medicine, while it uses methods borrowed from the natural sciences, is in my opinion above all a social science, for the doctor's goal is not only to heal a sick stomach or a fractured leg but, most of all, to keep people adjusted to their social environment ot to readjust them, as the case may be. In the practice of medicine, two elements are always at play, medicine on the one hand and society on the other, and considerations of a sociological nature are not only appropriate but absolutely necessary if one wishes to understand the phenomena in question." Such a postulation would not have found medical practice and political practice incompatable with each other.