Died 1931 | ||
Harold Wolferstan Thomas (1875–1931) was a Canadian doctor, noted for his research in the field of tropical medicine.
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Early life
Harold Wolferstan Thomas was born in 1875 in Montreal, Quebec, the son of the banker Francis Wolferstan Thomas (1834-1900) and his wife Harriet Amelia Thomas (née Goodhue). He studied medicine at McGill University in Montreal until 1897.
Career
Thomas worked in Germany (incluing at Göttingen and Munich) and at the Montreal General Hospital. From 1903, he worked at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and from 1904 was head of a laboratory in Runcorn. In 1904 he took part in an expedition to study tropical diseases in the Amazon region. Along with Anton Breinl (1880-1944), he discovered in 1905 that the arsenic preparation Atoxyl killed trypanosomes, the causative agent of sleeping sickness. The studies were performed by infecting laboratory animals such as mice, dogs and monkeys with Trypanosoma brucei gambiense and then using of Atoxyl to effect a cure or delay the progression of the disease.
Later life
Thomas died in 1931.