John Farrell Easmon

Who was John Farrell Easmon?

Dr. John Farrell Easmon, M.R.C.S. L.M., L.K.Q.C.P., M.D., CMO, was a prominent Sierra Leonean Creole doctor in the British Gold Coast who served as Chief Medical Officer during the 1890s. Easmon was the only West African to be promoted to Chief Medical Officer and served in this role with distinction during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Easmon was botanist and a noted expert on the study and treatment of tropical diseases. In 1884, Dr. Easmon wrote a The Nature and Treatment of Blackwater Fever, a pamphlet on Blackwater fever that first noted the relationship between malaria and the disease. Easmon was the first to term the coin 'Blackwater Fever' in his pamphlet on the malarial disease.