Almroth Wright
Encyclopedia
Sir Almroth Edward Wright, KBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

, CB
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...

 (1861–1947) was a British bacteriologist and immunologist.

He is notable for developing a system of anti-typhoid fever
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...

 inoculation
Inoculation
Inoculation is the placement of something that will grow or reproduce, and is most commonly used in respect of the introduction of a serum, vaccine, or antigenic substance into the body of a human or animal, especially to produce or boost immunity to a specific disease...

, recognizing early on that antibiotics would create resistant bacteria
Antibiotic resistance
Antibiotic resistance is a type of drug resistance where a microorganism is able to survive exposure to an antibiotic. While a spontaneous or induced genetic mutation in bacteria may confer resistance to antimicrobial drugs, genes that confer resistance can be transferred between bacteria in a...

 and being a strong advocate for preventive medicine
Preventive medicine
Preventive medicine or preventive care refers to measures taken to prevent diseases, rather than curing them or treating their symptoms...

.

Biography

Wright was born at Middleton Tyas
Middleton Tyas
Middleton Tyas is a village and civil parish in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire, England. It is located nearby to Scotch Corner.-History:The name Middleton is of Anglo-Saxon origin and it means middle-farm or middle-settlement...

, near Richmond, North Yorkshire
Richmond, North Yorkshire
Richmond is a market town and civil parish on the River Swale in North Yorkshire, England and is the administrative centre of the district of Richmondshire. It is situated on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and serves as the Park's main tourist centre...

 into a family of mixed Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...

 and Swedish
Swedes
Swedes are a Scandinavian nation and ethnic group native to Sweden, mostly inhabiting Sweden and the other Nordic countries, with descendants living in a number of countries.-Etymology:...

 descent. He was the son of Reverend Charles Henry Hamilton Wright, deacon of Middleton Tyas
Middleton Tyas
Middleton Tyas is a village and civil parish in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire, England. It is located nearby to Scotch Corner.-History:The name Middleton is of Anglo-Saxon origin and it means middle-farm or middle-settlement...

, who later served in Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...

, Dublin and Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

 and managed the Protestant Reformation Society. His mother was the daughter of Nils Almroth, Governor of Swedish Royal Mint in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

. His junior brother Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright
Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright
Sir Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright, LL.D. was the Secretary and Librarian of the London Library from 1893 until his death. He managed expansion of the library and compiled a comprehensive catalogue of its collection...

 became a prominent librarian.

He studied medicine at Dublin University. In the 19th century, Wright worked with the armed forces of Britain to develop vaccines and promote immunisation.

In 1902 Wright started a research department at St Mary's Hospital
St Mary's Hospital (London)
St Mary's Hospital is a hospital located in Paddington, London, England that was founded in 1845. Since the UK's first academic health science centre was created in 2008, it is operated by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which also operates Charing Cross Hospital, Hammersmith Hospital,...

 Medical School in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. He developed a system of anti-typhoid fever
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...

 inoculation
Inoculation
Inoculation is the placement of something that will grow or reproduce, and is most commonly used in respect of the introduction of a serum, vaccine, or antigenic substance into the body of a human or animal, especially to produce or boost immunity to a specific disease...

 and a method of measuring protective substances (opsonin
Opsonin
An opsonin is any molecule that targets an antigen for an immune response. However, the term is usually used in reference to molecules that act as a binding enhancer for the process of phagocytosis, especially antibodies, which coat the negatively-charged molecules on the membrane. Molecules that...

) in human blood. Citing the example of the Second Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...

, during which many soldiers died from easily preventable diseases, Wright convinced the armed forces that 10 million vaccines for the troops in northern France should be produced during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. Among the many bacteriologists who followed in Wright's footsteps at St Mary's was Sir Alexander Fleming, who in turn later discovered lysozyme
Lysozyme
Lysozyme, also known as muramidase or N-acetylmuramide glycanhydrolase, are glycoside hydrolases, enzymes that damage bacterial cell walls by catalyzing hydrolysis of 1,4-beta-linkages between N-acetylmuramic acid and N-acetyl-D-glucosamine residues in a peptidoglycan and between...

 and penicillin
Penicillin
Penicillin is a group of antibiotics derived from Penicillium fungi. They include penicillin G, procaine penicillin, benzathine penicillin, and penicillin V....

. he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1906.

Wright warned early on that antibiotics would create resistant bacteria
Antibiotic resistance
Antibiotic resistance is a type of drug resistance where a microorganism is able to survive exposure to an antibiotic. While a spontaneous or induced genetic mutation in bacteria may confer resistance to antimicrobial drugs, genes that confer resistance can be transferred between bacteria in a...

, something that has proven an increasing danger. He made his thoughts on preventive medicine
Preventive medicine
Preventive medicine or preventive care refers to measures taken to prevent diseases, rather than curing them or treating their symptoms...

 influential, stressing preventive measures. Wright's ideas have been re-asserted recently—50 years after his death—by modern researchers in articles in such periodicals as Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...

.

He also proposed that logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

 be introduced as a part of medical training, but his idea was never adopted. Wright also pointed out that Pasteur
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist born in Dole. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax. His experiments...

 and Fleming, although both excellent researchers, had not actually managed to find cures for the diseases which they had sought cures, but instead had stumbled upon cures for totally unrelated diseases.

The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage by Sir Almroth Wright M.D. F.R.S. was published in 1913 and is available on the Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...

 website.

Wright was immortalised by George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

 as Sir Colenso Ridgeon in the play 'The Doctor's Dilemma' written in 1906.

Works

  • The Unexpurgated Case against Woman Suffrage (1913)
  • Pathology and Treatment of War Wounds (1942)
  • Researches in Clinical Physiology (1943)
  • Studies on Immunization (2 vol., 1943–44)

See also

  • Frederick F. Russell
    Frederick F. Russell
    Brigadier General Frederick Fuller Russell was a U.S. Army physician who developed a typhoid vaccine in 1909. In 1911, the typhoid vaccination program was only the second time an entire U.S. army was immunized. The first was in 1776 when George Washington ordered the vaccination of the...


Tthe Plato of Praed street: the life and times of Almroth Wright. M.S.Dunnill. RSM Press 2000
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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