chairman Doctor General pathologist bacteriologist
He was born at Thurlaston, Leicestershire, England, the youngest of the five children of Arthur William Arkwright, a farmer, of Broughton Hall, Astley, Leicestershire and his wife and second cousin, Emma, daughter of John Wolley, of Beeston, Nottinghamshire. His mother died in 1866.
He was educated at Wellington College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He completed his medical training at Street Bartholomew"s Hospital (Barts), London, qualifying in 1889.
He was forced to give up his work due to severe dermatitis. He became a bacteriologist and from 1906 joined the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, first as a voluntary worker, then as assistant bacteriologist from 1908. His great-great-grandfather was Sir Richard Arkwright the inventor of textile manufacturing machinery.
At Cambridge he took the natural sciences tripos in 1884-1886 with zoology his major subject.
He held posts at Barts and later at the West London Hospital in Hammersmith and the Victoria Hospital for Children, in Fulham. Later he settled in general practice at Halesowen, then in Worcestershire, now part of the West Midlands.
However, after he suffered severe dermatitis and was forced to give up general practice. In 1906 he joined the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, first as a voluntary worker, then as assistant bacteriologist from 1908.
His early work considered the spread of diphtheria in schools and the differentiation of meningococcus strains.
In 1915 he studied an epidemic of cerebrospinal meningitis among troops camped on Salisbury Plain. In 1915 during the First World War he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and was posted to Malta. There he was pathologist in charge of the laboratory at Street George"s Hospital.
He made observations on convalescent carriers in bacillary dysentery and also blackwater fever.
Together with Arthur Bacot and F. Martin Duncan he demonstrated the association of the trench fever virus with Rickettsia quintana in lice. His most important work was bacterial variation.
He noted variants as R and South (rough and smooth) in bacilli of the dysentery and enteric group. In 1922 he went with Bacot to Cairo to investigate the cause of typhus fever.
After two months" work they both contracted the disease.
Bacot died, and Arkwright recovered after a long illness. On return to the Lister, he investigated animal diseases including foot-and-mouth. He became its chairman in 1931.
He was chairman of the committee on Brucella abortus infection and on Johne"s disease (Paratuberculosis).
He also chaired the joint committee on tuberculosis. He retired from the Lister in 1927 but continued to work as an honorary member and represented the Royal Society on the Lister governing body from 1932-1944.
He had produced over fifty papers on bacteriology and immunology.
Royal Society]
In 1918 he was appointed a member of the War Office committee on trench fever. From 1925 onwards he was a member of the Ministry of Agriculture"s committee on the disease. He was a member of the Medical Research Council from 1930-1934 and the Agricultural Research Council from 1931-1940.
