Harry Tennison Armstrong qualified as a Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (MRCVS) in London in May 1890. He joined the Veterinary Service of the Cape Colony as an assistant veterinary surgeon in October 1896. During February and March of 1897 he worked at the rinderpest station near Kimberley, set up for Robert Koch* and his team, where he performed some of the early inocculations with bile. He was posted to Lesotho from March to early August 1897, but later that year was sent to Graaff Reinet, where he remained for several years. During 1898 he performed experiments in connection with parasites in ostriches, sheep and goats, giving particular attention to the wire-worm (Trichostrongylus douglasii) which infects the stomachs of ostriches. The most effective remedy to combat these was found to be carbolic acid. His reports on this work to the Chief Veterinary Surgeon of the Cape, D. Hutcheon*, were published in the Agricultural Journal of the Cape Colony in 1898 and 1899 (Vol. 13, pp. 342-345; Vol. 14, pp. 208-210), and were reviewed with Hutcheon's own earlier work in the same journal (Vol. 14, pp. 725-732). He died in 1905, at the ate of only 37.
