Abstract
Harold Howard Shearme Wolferstan Thomas was a researcher from the Liverpool School of Tropical Diseases who enjoyed brief prominence in British medicine at the time he was transferred to Amazonia (1905). Five years earlier, an overseas expedition from this school had been in the region to investigate yellow fever. When Thomas and his colleague Anton Breinl set sail for Manaus, their mission was still to investigate this disease. In the interval between the two expeditions, dynamic processes were underway in the realm of tropical medicine, especially with regard to trypanosomiasis. Thomas gained recognition when he showed that atoxyl was an effective treatment for humans and animals infected with trypanosomes. In this article, Thomas guides us through a web of actors and diseases in the Americas, Europe and Africa. Their synergies reveal the outlines of tropical medicine and the place occupied by the Amazon region within this field at the beginning of the twentieth century, with special emphasis on trypanosomiasis. Until his death in Manaus in 1931, Thomas involved himself with other local health problems and with physicians who were on the forefront of Amazonian public health and experimental medicine, an unusual course for most European researchers sent on missions to colonies and areas influenced by imperial metropolises. Thomas was ‘rediscovered’ two decades after his death when he was named one of the recipients of a prize from the Belgian government granted to the scientists who discovered the treatment for sleeping sickness. As we shall see, his memory was revived on other occasions in the academic sphere.
Keywords
Harold Howard Shearme Wolferstan Thomas; atoxyl; Sleeping Sickness; Chagas Disease; yellow fever