Poisonous cures

To her credit, Poison in Small Measure: Dr [John B. Christopherson] and the Cure for Bilharzia is not an attempt to bring delayed fame to a deceased family member; rather it aims to provide an understanding of the relation between science and personality in the world of scientific fame and recognition. "Christopherson was in Sudan for the better part of 18 years," [Ann Crichton-Harris Brill] writes, "and during that time three major personal conflicts interfered with his career path." One of Christopherson's powerful adversaries for example, was Dr. Andrew Balfour, director of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratory in the Sudan and later director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in England. He and Christopherson, who was the medical director of the Sudan hospital, engaged in periodic turf wars and chronic administrative frictions that later shifted into a battle over naming rights of a spirochete that Christopherson believed caused relapsing fever. Was the microscopic entity a new thing, and thus a new disease, or just a parasite already known? Was it Christopherson's discovery or another's?