CME INDIA Presentation by ⚜ Dr. M. Gowri Sankar, MD, Senior Assistant Professor, Dept. of General Medicine, Government Medical College and ESI Hospital, Coimbatore.
Today’s History Feature:
Dr. Theobald Smith
(Jul 31, 1859 – Dec 10, 1934)
💠American Bacteriologist
His contributions…
🔸Theobald Smith studied medicine and got his MD graduation from Albany Medical College, New York in 1881.
🔸After his studies, Dr. Smith got appointed as an Inspector of Bureau for Animal Industry to investigate various diseases of animals in Washington.
🔸While Dr. Smith was working under his chief Dr. Daniel E. Salmon, he discovered the bacterial species named (by custom) as Salmonella enterica and eventually formed the Genus Salmonella.
🔸Dr. Smith is also well-known for his ground-breaking work on Texas Cattle Disease, which was a devastating disease that caused huge casualties in cattles.
🔸Moreover, he was the first to demonstrate small Intra-erythrocytic bodies in infected cattles and named the protozoan agent as Piroplasma bigeminum (now called as Babesia bigemina). Also, he discovered Blood-Sucking Ticks as the vector for the disease.
🔸For the first time in history, he had correlated the arthropod with the transmission of infectious disease.
🔸Ultimately, his discovery paved the new way to understand other Arthropod-Borne Diseases such as malaria, typhus, yellow fever and many others. It also made it possible to control the disease by killing the ticks.
🔸Subsequently, he introduced the water sanitation by using “Smith Fermentation Tube method” wherein he researched the coliform count indicating the degree of faecal contamination in drinking water. Thereby he was recognized as a “Father of Total Coliform Count.”
🔸He further undertook many practical and theoretical studies on the production of tetanus and diptheria anti-toxins.
🔸Consequently, he was the first to demonstrate the hypersensitivity reactions of antitoxin in animals – called as “Theobald Smith Phenomenon” – now called as Anaphylaxis.
🔸Eventually, Dr. Smith’s pioneering work in epidemiology and bacteriology earned him title – America’s First Internationally Significant Medical Research Scientist.
A Day to Commemorate…
A Tenacious Researcher
Dr. Theobald Smith 🙏
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