biography
| name: |
Stiles, Charles W(ardell)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1867–1941)
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| biography:
| Medical zoologist and public-health reformer, born in Spring Valley, New York, USA. He did his graduate studies at several major European universities before going to Washington, DC as a zoologist with the Department of Agriculture's bureau of animal industry (1891–1902). He investigated diseases in animals in slaughterhouses, pork trichinosis, and parasitic worms in livestock. In 1895 he was one of five elected to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, serving as its secretary in 1898–1936. Transferring to the Hygienic Laboratory of the US Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, he served as chief of its zoology division (1902–31) and also taught medical zoology at Georgetown (1892–1906) and at Johns Hopkins (1897–1937). His major contribution was his discovery of a variety of hookworm and confirming it as endemic in the S USA (1902). This work led to the formation of the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission (1909) and its campaign to eradicate hookworm disease in the USA. He investigated the health problems in various work sites and performed experiments on soil pollution caused by pathogens in groundwater. Another of his major contributions (which occupied him from the 1890s to the mid-1930s) was co-writing the Index-Catalog of Medical and Veterinary Zoology (vols 1–4, 1902–20; and supplements). |
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