Poison in small measure : : Dr. Christopherson and the cure for bilharzia / / by Ann Crichton-Harris.

• Author: Crichton-Harris, Ann.
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Brill eBook titles 2009
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (448 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

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.

Table of Contents

Worms and dead eggs in the long hot summer -- Three generations of Christophersons : tanner to clergyman to physician -- The Boer War experience : the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital-a palace in the desert -- Sudan 1902-3 : smallpox delivers both fear and opportunity -- 1904 and the appointment blunder -- The wellcome laboratory on the Nile and a relapsing fever dispute. A storm in a teacup? Some of what really happened is revealed only in 1923 -- Christopherson's difficult years : surviving disaster : 1908-1911 -- 1912 marriage and the decision to remain in Sudan -- With the Red Cross in Serbia, and Rudolph Slatin's role as 'fairy godfather' -- France 1917. The commission on medical establishments -- The 'Aha' moment and consequences -- On the practice of medicine, Sudan 1902-1919 -- Life after Sudan-the varied life of a London consultant -- Heavensgate, Gloucestershire -- Looking back from the twenty-first century.