Almroth Edward Wright, medical scientist, was the son of Rev. Charles Henry Hamilton Wright and his wife Ebba Johanna Dorothiea Allmroth. He was educated
privately and at the Royal Academical Institution in Belfast. He continued his
studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he obtained a degree in modern
literature in 1882 and a medical degree in 1883. After studying pathology and
physiological chemistry for a year in Germany he studied law and took a
clerkship at the Admiralty. Meanwhile he also conducted medical research and in
1887 became a demonstrator in pathology at the University of Cambridge. After
spending two years in Sydney, Australia, he became professor of pathology at
the Army Medical School at Netley, Hampshire, from 1892 to 1902. While there he
and Sir W. Leishman developed a typhoid vaccine. From 1902 to 1946 he held the
post of pathologist at St Mary's Hospital, London, where he did research on
vaccine therapy.
In 1911 Wright was invited to visit South Africa by the
Bacteriological Institute Committee, which was planning the establishment of
the South African Institute for Medical Research in Johannesburg. He was asked
to advise on the building and equipment of the institute and to initiate a
research programme into pneumonia, which was causing many deaths among mine
workers on the Witwatersrand. He arrived in September 1911 and asked to be
payed a thousand pounds per month for a six months visit, but does not appear
to have made much of a contribution (Malan, 1988). However, he did set research
on pneumonia in motion with the assistance of R.W. Dodgson*, W.P. Morgan, R.L.
Colebrook, and F.S. Lister* and wrote a Report
to the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association on the results of an inquiry
into the causation, prophylaxis and treatment of the pneumonia which affects
the native, and in particular the tropical native labourers in the Rand mines
(London, 1912, 36pp). He started inoculation experiments that were described in
On pharmaco-therapy and preventive
inoculation applied to pneumonia in the African native (London, 1914, 124pp).
Though he concluded that the experiments were successful, the results were not
unequivocal and the effect of the inoculation, if any, was short-lived, mainly
because the types of pneumococcus involved were still unknown. These
experiments were the first effort at immunization against pneumonia.
After his return to London Wright did war service in France
during World War I (1914-1918), including controversial research on the control
of wound infection. His war work earned him a gold medal from the Royal Society
of Medicine in 1920 and other awards. Back at St Mary's he continued his research
on the problems of immunization. His research was published in some 200
scientific papers. Many of his ingenious techniques were described in his Handbook of the technique of the teat and
capillary glass tube and its application in medicine and bacteriology (1912
and 1921). Other books relating to his medical work were Principles of microscopy (1906), Studies on immunization and their application to the diagnosis and treatment
of bacterial infection (1909), Pathology
and treatment of war wounds (1942) and Researches
in clinical physiology (1943). His writings on human thinking and logic
were published posthumously as Alethetropic
logic (1953). In The unexpurgated
case against woman suffrage (1913) he argued that women were physically,
intellectually and morally inferior to men.
Wright was knighted in 1906, was honoured as a Companion of
the Order of the Bath (CB, 1915) and a Knight Commander of the Order of the
British Empire (KBE, 1919), elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1906, and
awarded several honorary degrees. In 1889 he married Lady Jane Georgina Wilson, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.
