Paul Fildes

Paul Fildes, portrayed by Luke Fildes.

Paul Gordon Fildes (born February 10, 1882 in Kensington , London , † February 5, 1971 ) was a British microbiologist and pathologist .

Life

He was the son of the painter Luke Fildes (1843-1927), known as the illustrator of Charles Dickens and for his painting The Doctor (1891, National Gallery of British Art ), which was inspired by his son's fatal tuberculosis disease. Fildes went to Winchester College and studied at Trinity College of Cambridge University medicine and surgery. He had his clinical training at the Royal London Hospital with a bachelor's degree in medicine (MB) and surgery (BCh) in 1909. Initially, he wanted to be a surgeon, but turned to bacteriology. After completing his studies, he stayed at the London Hospital as an assistant in bacteriology with William Bulloch , before becoming head of clinical bacteriology at the Medical Research Council at Middlesex Hospital in 1934 . At London Hospital, he worked in particular on chemotherapy for syphilis , collaborating with James McIntosh. Together they also published a book on syphilis.

In 1911 he published his extensive and groundbreaking study with William Bulloch on hemophilia , in which they unequivocally demonstrated the type of inheritance via the female line (recessive on the X chromosome).

From 1915 to 1919 he worked as a pathologist (and Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander) in the Royal Navy in their hospital in Haslar . For his work in World War I. He was awarded the 1919 OBE .

He clarified the mechanism of the pathogenicity of tetanus and studied the metabolism of bacteria with Marjory Stephenson , BCJG Knight and Donald D. Woods. In 1940 he and Donald D. Woods explained the antibacterial mechanism of action of sulfonamides . In 1919 he was one of the founders of the Journal of Experimental Pathology .

In World War II

During the Second World War, Fildes led bacteriological warfare (or defense against bacteriological warfare) in Great Britain and worked at the secret state research center in Porton Down near Salisbury , originally founded during the First World War for chemical warfare . Botulinum toxin A was prepared there in 1941 , the basis of the later drug Dysport. An independent preparation of botulinum toxin A (and Carl Lamanna's first preparation in crystalline form in 1946) in the US Army's biological weapons research laboratory in Fort Dettrick , which provided the basis for the later botox.

In 1942 he and colleagues carried out anthrax experiments on the remote Scottish island of Gruinard , which was then contaminated until successful decontamination measures in 1986. He developed both anthrax (Agent N) and botulinum toxin (Agent X) as biological weapons for Great Britain and traveled to the USA, where, on the instructions of Winston Churchill, 500,000 anthrax bombs were produced for use against Germany. Operation Vegetarian also planned to destroy German livestock with food thrown from the air and prepared with anthrax. Even after the war he was involved in the biological warfare program with tests of anthrax bombs off Antigua in the winter of 1948. The development of nuclear weapons and concerns from other scientists made the program obsolete.

He is said to have been involved in the preparation of the Heydrich assassination attempt ( Operation Anthropoid ) by preparing the hand grenades with botulinum toxin, as Robert Harris claims in his book on biological warfare, citing Filde's own testimony. Neither Heydrich nor two other people (including one of the assassins Jan Kubiš ) who were hit by the splinters showed the typical symptoms. That is why this is generally doubted, especially since Fildes, although a conscientious scientist, tended to be boastful outside the laboratory.

After the war

In 1946 his research group at the Medical Research Council was renewed. In 1949 he retired, but did research for thirteen years in Oxford, where Howard Walter Florey made a laboratory in the Dunn School of Pathology available to him. In 1963 he moved to London and pursued historical interests.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1934), whose Copley Medal he received in 1963 and whose Royal Medal he received in 1953. In 1950 he received the Leeuwenhoek Medal , also from the Royal Society. In 1946 he was ennobled, especially for his contributions to warfare in World War II. In 1948 he received an honorary doctorate (Sc. D.) from Cambridge University and in 1959 from Reading University.

Fildes wasn't married.

Fonts

• Editor A system of bacteriology in relation to medicine , 9 volumes, London, His Majesty's Stationary Office, 1929, 1930
• Editor with WE van Heyningen The nature of virus multiplication , Cambridge University Press 1953 (Symposium of the Society for General Microbiology, Oxford 1952)
• An analysis of the results of Wassermann reactions in 1,435 cases of syphilis or suspected syphilis , Oxford University Press 1919
• with James McIntosh Syphilis from the modern standpoint , Edward Arnold 1911
• with James McIntosh The theory and practice of the treatment of Syphilis with Ehrlich's New Specific 606 , The Lancet, Volume 2, 1910
• with William Bulloch Treasury of Human Inheritance , Vol. V, VI, University of London 1911 (hemophilia study)

literature

• GP Gladstone, Obituary in J. General Microbiology, Vol. 70, 1972, pp. 1-11
• Gladstone, B. Knight, Graham Wilson, Obituary Notices Fellows Royal Society
• Obituary in British J. Exp. Pathology, April 1971, PMC 2072256 (free full text)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stephen Pemberton: The bleeding disease , The Johns Hopkins University Press 2011
2. ↑ Richard Placzek Botulinum toxin in orthopedics and sports medicine , Habilitation, Charité Berlin 2007, pdf
3. ^ PBS on Paul Fildes
4. ^ Robert Harris, Jeremy Paxman A higher form of killing. The secret history of chemical and biological warfare , London, Chatto and Windus 1982
5. ↑ Ray Delfalque, Amos J. Wright The puzzling death of Reinhard Heydrich , Bulletin of Anesthesia History, January 2009, p. 6