page_title: Alfredo Kanthack
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Alfredo Kanthack / Career
caption_attribution_description: St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1896. A group in a laboratory. Seated front-left Earnest Shaw, then T.S.V. Strangeways; in white coat standing A.A. Kanthack, J.W.W. Stephens. Wellcome Images Keywords: Institutions
context_page_description: Alfredo Kanthack BA, BSc, BS, MA, MB, MD, LRCP, FRCP, FRCS was a Brazilian-born microbiologist and pathologist who worked in England. His distinguished career was cut short by his premature death at the age of 35.
context_section_description: Returning from Berlin in 1890 he served as Obstetric Resident at St Bartholomew's Hospital
  While holding this position he was appointed by the Royal College of Surgeons, Royal College of Physicians, and the Executive Committee of the National Leprosy Fund as one of the Special Commissioners to investigate the prevalence and treatment of leprosy in India. Among his conclusions were that direct contagion was at the most a very small factor in causing the spread of leprosy, and that compulsory segregation of lepers was not advisable.
  On his return from India in 1891 he matriculated at Cambridge as a Fellow Commoner of St John's College. At the same time he was appointed John Lucas Walker Student in Pathology, a scholarship given for original pathological research, under which he studied immunity.
  In 1892 he left Cambridge and began to practise as a physician in Liverpool. He was appointed Medical Tutor and Registrar at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary where he set up a Bacteriological Laboratory, Senior Demonstrator of Bacteriology in a post specially created for him, and also Medical Tutor at University College, Liverpool.
  In 1893 he returned to St Bartholomew's as Director of the Pathological Department in the Medical School and Hospital, Lecturer on Pathology and Bacteriology, and Curator of the Museum.
  In 1894 he suffered from a severe attack of typhoid fever, but in spite of this won the prestigious Royal College of Surgeons' Jacksonian Prize in 1895 for his essay The Aetiology of Tetanus and the Value of the Serum Treatment.
  In 1896 he acted as Deputy to Professor Charles Roy, who had been appointed to the new Chair in Pathology at Cambridge but was unable to take up the post due to ill-health. This required Kanthack to travel to and from St Bartholomew's and the University. In the spring of 1897 he moved to Cambridge where he was given an honorary MA and elected a Fellow of King's. In the autumn he succeeded Roy as Professor of Pathology at the age of 34.
  During the autumn of 1898 the report of his research on the tsetse fly, conducted by him in conjunction with Herbert Durham and Walter Blandford, was published. This report cleared the ground for further investigation of what was then known as tsetse-fly disease, although no method of prevention or cure was yet propounded His last work, in conjunction with Dr Sydney Sladen, reported on tuberculous milk.
  Shortly before his death he recommended one of his promising students, Walter Myers, for a John Lucas Walker scholarship.
  Kanthack is credited for the use of formalin as a histological fixative.
caption: St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1896. Kanthack is standing in white coat. 
  Wellcome Images
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