GREAT DOCTOR DEAD

Northern Advocate, 29 December 1934, Page 12

GREAT DOCTOR DEAD

REVEALER OF HOOKWORM. COLONEL BAILEY ASHFORD. The death is announced in San Juan, Puerto Rica, of Colonel Bailey Ashford, D.S.M., C.M.G., whose discovery of hookworm in 1899 caused a revolution in tropical medicine,. Since that/ time, the death rate in Puerto Rico of anaemia, hitherto known as “the natural death” for centuries, was reduced by 90 per cent. As a young man in the United State Army Medical Service at Puerto Rico, Colonel Ashford began to doubt accepted theories about pernicious anaemia on the islands, one ojfat the most thickly-populated region? of the world. During the course o' '• his unpleasant laboratory work, he discovered the eggs of a worm reported to be found -in anaemic Itai- ; ians who had worked in the St. Gothard tunnel. Shortly after he telegraphed to the chief surgeon: “Have this day proven the cause of pernicious, progressive anaemia of this island to be due to ancylostomum duodenale.” Young Ashford was rebuked by his superiors. “Army people should not fool with civil affairs,” he was told. Physicians were sceptical. Few believed in him. The New York Medical Journal waited a year, before pub:* lishing his finding. He was rewarded, however, by seeing the official acknowledgment followed by the development of a method of treatment widely applied in the Southern States in,South America, and many tropical countries. The prevalence of hookworm in the United States led Mr John D. Rockefeller to become interested in its eradication and in forming the basis for wide research which eventually centred in the Rockefeller Foundation. Experts were lent by the Foundation to many countries, eluding Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and the South Seas. Before his retirement, after 30 years’ service, Congress conferred on Colonel Ashford the Distinguished Service Medal, and King George decorated him with the Cross of St. Michael and St. George for his services to the British Empire. He represented the United States at the Inteniational Congress on Industrial and Alimentary Hygiene in Brussels in 1910, and at a similar congress in 1928 in Cairo, where he was decorated by the Government of Egypt. His last public appearance was at the Pan-American Medical Congress in New York last spring. In deference to his wish Colonel Ashford was accorded a simple burial near the spot where his discovery was announced.