A Soldier in Science: the Autobiography of Bailey K Ashford

Abstract

COL. BAILEY KELLY ASHFORD, of the United States Army Medical Service, died on the day on which his autobiography was published. His work in scientific medicine falls into two main parts, hookworm and sprue. In 1899 he found hookworm eggs in the faeces of anaemic Porto Rican peasants, and by mass deworming lowered the island's mortality from anaemia by 85 and increased the peasant's working capacity by 60 per cent. He recognised that the worm was not the well-known Old World hookworm, but it was left to Stiles to designate it Necator americanus. In 1933 Ashford illuminated acute hookworm infection by his description of a small epidemic acquired during sea bathing. During the War his main charge was the command of the school at Langres for the battle training of American medical officers. He was awarded the D.S.M. and Honorary C.M.G., and the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Nile, and was appointed editor-in-chief of the United States Medical History of the War. He was instru mental in founding in -Porto Rico an Institute of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and in arranging for its expansion into a School under the auspices of the Columbia University, New York. After experience of 4,000 cases of sprue he concluded that the essential factor in its causation was unbalanced diet, and that when to this was added infection by Monilia, of which he recognised only one species, there resulted sprue. He unswervingly advocated and fruitfully practised that combination of clinical observation and scientific investigation which has strikingly advanced tropical medicine.

A Soldier in Science: the Autobiography of Bailey K. Ashford.

. Pp. v + 425 + 4 plates. (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1934.) 12s. 6d. net.