Almroth Wright
Sir Almroth Edward Wright (born August 10, 1861 in Middleton Tyas , Yorkshire , † April 30, 1947 in Farnham Common , Buckinghamshire ) was a British microbiologist , pathologist and immunologist .
Wright studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin (graduated in 1883). He continued his education on the continent at the universities of Leipzig, Marburg and Strasbourg, taught at various universities and from 1892 was Professor of Pathology at the Army Medical School in Netley .
Typhoid epidemics were a major problem in the British Army at a time when infectious diseases were regularly killing more soldiers in the British Army than direct enemy action. Wright developed a killed bacterial typhoid vaccine , which he tested on troops (3,000 soldiers) in India. He proposed a mass vaccination of British troops in the Boer War with the vaccine in 1899 , but met with considerable opposition and was only able to vaccinate 14,000 volunteers. The result of the Boer War was devastating typhus epidemics among British troops, with 58,000 sick and 9,000 dead.
Vaccination was also controversial among British doctors at the time, and Wright had a heated argument with the famous statistician Karl Pearson in the British Medical Journal about the value of vaccination, before a large-scale attempt in the Boer War made its success clear. During the First World War, the British Army was the only one of the armies involved to vaccinate against typhus on a large scale. Wright himself was with British troops in France during World War I to study wound infections.
In 1902 he left the British Army and became Professor of Pathology at St. Mary's Hospital in London. He did research there on opsonins and developed a vaccine against pneumonia. In 1946 he retired.
Wright was knighted as a Knight Bachelor in 1906 for his services to the typhoid vaccination . In 1917 he received the Buchanan Medal . In 1919 he was made Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire . On December 30, 1918 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences .
Web links
swell
- Sir Almroth Edward Wright In: Encyclopædia Britannica .
- Susan and Stanley Plotkin A short history of vaccination in Stanley Plotkin, Walter Orenstein, Paul Offit (Editors) Vaccines , Elsevier, Saunders 2008
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Knights and Dames at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
- ^ List of former members since 1666: Letter W. Académie des sciences, accessed on March 16, 2020 (French).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wright, Almroth |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wright, Almroth E .; Wright, Sir Almroth Edward (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British microbiologist, pathologist and immunologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 10, 1861 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Middleton Tyas , Yorkshire |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 30, 1947 |
| Place of death | Farnham Common , Buckinghamshire |