Poison in Small Measure: Dr. Christopherson and the Cure for Bilharzia

Ann Crichton-Harris

ISBN 10: 9004175415 / ISBN 13: 9789004175419

Published by Brill, 2009

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0001900315

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Poison in Small Measure: Dr. Christopherson and the Cure for Bilharzia
• Publisher: Brill
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9004175415
• ISBN 13: 9789004175419
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

In 1917, in Khartoum, Dr. J.B. Christopherson experimentally treated seventy bilharzia patients with injections of antimony tartrate, an early chemotherapy. His was the first successful treatment. Antimony had never been tried on bilharzia patients before, or so he believed. This biography examines the turbulent life of this medical pioneer, his fight for priority and his struggle for professional survival amid the politics of exclusion in General Wingate's Sudan.
His was a career full of paradoxes: acclaimed for intercepting a smallpox outbreak, building a hospital and satellite clinics, he battled accusations and removal as director of the Medical Department. From the Boer War, two decades in Sudan, his capture and release in Serbia to his time in France in WW1, controversy seldom left him.

About the Author

Ann Crichton-Harris is an independent scholar with an interest in medical history and colonial history. She is the author of several books, the last: Seventeen Letters to Tatham: A WW1 Surgeon in East Africa (Keneggy West Books, Toronto. 2001).