Myra at 3, wearing her bridesmaid's dress. She wore it again three years later, when meeting HRH the Princess Mary, Countess of Harewood at the opening of the new orthopaedic ward at East Surrey Hospital, Whitepost Hill, 12 July 1930. Myra's mother was an under-nanny and an excellent seamstress, lenthening the skirts as necessary. Dr. Dulake pointed out 'deficiencies in equipment', 'shortage of funds' and 'blindness of the lay administration to medico-legal complications' at the hospital from 1926-39. Lights failed during major surgery; staff electrocuted themselves; even an operating table collapsed! [1]		This tender picture from 1918 by Keystone View Co. shows Princess Mary nursing at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, London during the first World War. In 1914 she sent Christmas gift boxes to each soldier and sailor, at her own expense. From 1920 onwards, Princess Mary was Honorary President of the British Girl Guide Association till her death in 1965; 1926 British Red Cross Detachments; 1939 Auxiliary Territorial Service; 1950 RAF Nursing Service; 1956 General in the British Army. full size

Source: Royal Society full size Dr F.W.Twort FRS, MRCS, LRCP, the outstanding research-worker from Camberley, Surrey and St. Thomas' Hospital, London, who 'had made valuable contributions to bacteriology'*. In 1915 The Lancet published his discoveries of a new kind of medicine.[33] He then took responsibility for bacteriology in Salonika during WW1, where medical colleague Philip Mitchiner, a notable Old Reigatian, and also from St.Thomas',was the surgeon treating gangrene infections. *obituary in 1950 The Lancet Twort looked upon his research on viruses as the most important he had undertaken.[26] His lab destroyed by bombs, he was forced to experiment at home because of "official parsimony".[29]

A keen Territorial Army man from its beginning in 1908, Philip Mitchiner volunteered to go overseas as Army Surgeon at Salonika, Serbia in 1915 - as did a fellow Surrey resident, Dr. Frederick Twort, a bacteriologist. Twort had discovered a method of vaccinating cattle against Johne's disease. He had found that the missing link in previous attempts to grow the bacterium was an 'essential substance' which later proved to be vitamin K - the first vitamin! Just before leaving for Salonika, he had published his famous account in The Lancet of a germ-destroying 'bacteriolytic agent' he had discovered. [30] This was soon re-named by a French-Canadian scientist, Felix d'Herelle as bacteriophage or phage, for short - from the Greek, phagein - to eat, to devour, to destroy).

Twort had also done his medical training at St. Thomas's Hospital and worked in the bacteriology laboratory for a while. He did seven years research at the London Hospital (now Royal), then in 1909 he was appointed Superintendent of the most unusual but prestigious Brown Animal Sanitary Institution. He conducted the research while the routine care of the animals was in the hands of a veterinary surgeon colleague.[30] The archives show that his expertise on phages was being sought by hospital consultants for human infections.[27] Yes, there is at least one account dated 1931, that IV phages were successfully treating endocarditis - a life-threatening infection of the heart that still, today, is a big worry for dentists, doctors and patients' families with only traditional antibiotics to offer.

In the early 20th century, both men, Twort and Mitchiner, had done pioneering work with new methods to identify then treat infections. This was vital for those emergency situations on battlefields overseas, where soldiers were marching through manured fields, deep mud or heavy snow, at the cost of many lives. [4] The cold does not kill the germs and it freezes the flesh. Dysentery was rife. Gangrene was a killer.

Myra can remember her father telling her that Mitchiner specialised in seeing to soldiers with gangrene rotting the feet (also known as Trench Foot).

Meanwhile, during WW1, a grand old property and surrounding parkland near the centre of the town of Reigate had been commandeered by the British Army. This was Reigate Lodge. There were strong medical connections because it had been the country seat of the late Sir Thomas Watson, Bt., MD FRCP FRS. Born in a previous generation, in 1792, he had been a great supporter of Lord Lister and also, in 1870, Physician to Queen Victoria. After WW1, the old building was demolished, making space for a new grammar school for Reigate girls. One of the governors of the new school Reigate County School For Girls, a famous geologist Dr. Margaret Crosfield, wrote her notes on the back of suffragette leaflets! The original ice-house is still in the grounds of the County School and was filmed recently for posterity, before being closed up again for health and safety reasons, no doubt. There was also space on the old Reigate Lodge estate for some good quality housing. One property was bought by the Borough of Reigate for a Medical Officer of Health, so this became the home of Dr. Dulake. Just beside some of the splendid old pillars and brick walls, this was 1, South Walk. Many years later, in 1959, the next generation of Arnold Ward's family moved to Reigate. I am the second daughter. It happened to be the very same house where Dr.Dulake had lived years before!

From 1959, we four children also went to the nearby Holmesdale School, and are contemporaries of Myra's three boys. Our mother, Audrey Ward, taught at Holmesdale School and then Reigate Priory School, also founding the Reigate Priory Museum. She gave many hundreds of lectures on local history over the next thirty years or so, to promote education through what is available, locally - on our doorsteps. Little did we know that our own house already had great significance in the local history of medicine...

In the 1990's Myra and I were next door neighbours. We both worked for some years at Reigate Priory Junior School. Myra gave talks to the pupils, showing them her highly-prized WAAF uniform from all those years ago in World War 2 - and telling them about air raids, bombings, and Winston Churchill of course. Meanwhile her ex-RAF husband Nigel did the garden and grew sweet peas. It was a grand day when both Myra and Nigel came to our Rabbit wedding, bringing their pet tortoises, Tommy and Claire - the large tortoise-shells festooned with flowers.

The story about her "gangrene medicine" has only just come to light in 2008, when I visited her to ask if I might borrow her WAAF hat for my forthcoming Amazing Phage video event on Battle of Britain Day in September! [3] It is also Prince Harry's birthday, according to my diary, and the birthday of Lady Soames - Fellow Emeritus of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. I am a new girl there. Lady Soames is Winston Churchill's youngest daughter; I had met her in June 2008 when she presented me with the Churchill Fellow's Silver Medallion.

In the early 20th century, anti-gas gangrene serum (AGGS) and anti-gas gangrene antitoxin were commonly used as a preventative after surgery and on wounds. The first experimental results were announced in the New York Times in 1915 [17] from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where a French-Canadian, Felix d'Herelle was also working [13]. This was at the same time that Twort, in London, published his new discovery. D'Herelle developed it between the two wars with phage injectable suspension (IV) prepared sometimes in diluted human serum, rather than equine serum, to make it better for human use. [11] Felix d'Herelle's great-grandson Hubert Mazure has confirmed that IV injectable preparations of phages used to be prepared, occasionally, but were never widely used. [20] This, combined with the detective work done studying the archives in London, makes it highly likely that phages were in Myra's gangrene medicine, saving her life so spectacularly in 1929. [5], [27] A New York Times article in Feb 2000 includes an interview with a doctor - a Prince - who had phages injected by IV. [26]

There are different kinds of serum/antitoxin: anti-coli serum, anti-streptococcal serum, and so on - for each of the names of the bacteria that we are familiar with today. Mr Mitchiner's archived notebooks, dating back to 1909, show that trainee doctors were being taught to use these specific anti-bacterial sera, especially for diseases of the stomach and intestines, and this was backed up with statistics from international research. [5] It was necessary to check what the specific bacteria were first - via the bacteriology labs where Twort worked. By the time of the First World War, mobile microbiology units were introduced. There is a photo in the Wellcome Images collection of just such a vehicle - presented by HRH Princess Christian, for use amongst the troops in France.[27]

As Myra was growing up in the 20s and 30s, Mr. Mitchiner continued his highly distinguished surgical career with St. Thomas's Hospital, the University of London and the Royal College of Surgeons. By 1941 he was Honorary Surgeon to King George VI [12]. With the Territorial Army as his "hobby", in 1945 during WW2, he was promoted to the very top rank of Major-General.[27]

Sadly, by that time Professor Twort's experiences with the Medical Research Council had exasperated him completely. He was sure that his work on phage medicine had been deliberately suppressed. He had taken the matter to court (unsuccessfully), and wrote many open letters trying to get the message through. His letter to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill resulted in a brief acknowledgement from 10 Downing Street. Even his discovery of vitamin K had been overlooked, with the 1943 Nobel Prize for Medicine being awarded to two professors in the USA. Next, Twort's phage discoveries were completely left out of a 1944 BBC production on "War against Microbes".[27] That would have been a bitter disappointment, especially at a time when antibiotics were a major news topic, thanks to the new broadcasting potential and the mass media.[28]

Meanwhile in 1943, a British physician formally recommended the therapeutic value of anti-gas gangrene serum to the Medical Research Council when used alongside surgery. [14] By then, the "Wellcome" UK brand of a-g-g-globulins had featured in the British Medical Journal for at least a decade. [27]

By 1944, exact instructions about it had been sent round in a circular letter from the United States Army's Office of the Chief Surgeon, European Theater of Operations [18] - in an Appendix. You can refer to these documents online.

Photo: Mr Philip Mitchiner at St. Thomas' sports, by A.E.P.Twort [30]

It is interesting to note that in January 1947, P.H. Mitchiner CB, CBE, TD, FRCS delivered a lecture entitled "Surgery In Two Wars", to the Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow, Scotland.[2] His last point, and possibly the one he was emphasising to his audience of illustrious colleagues before closing, was that he would say a few words on "dread infections" - gas gangrene (and then tetanus). He stated firmly: "Undoubtedly, the prophylactic use of anti-gas gangrene serum and chemo-therapy {i.e. penicillin and sulphonamide drugs} have done much to reduce the incidence and virulence of gas gangrene." He made no comment about bacteriophages. Perhaps the reason is becoming plain.

Myra at Calgary, Canada, July 2006 at a Landymore family reunion

Well, in 1931 she had her tonsils and adenoids taken out by Dr. Dulake, after throat infections.

In 1940 after Dunkirk, which Churchill famously described as a "miracle of deliverance", she caught dysentery from the troops and POWs travelling through Reigate on their way from Dover to the camps at Farnborough. It was just around her 16th birthday. She was helping her mother and the Women's Voluntary Services, WVS, handing out cups of tea through the train windows. She was ill for about a month, and only one other Reigate resident caught it.

In 1941 Myra got 'trench mouth' - her teeth all wiggled, she says, and it was like gingivitis. It is very possible from her description that the medicine Dr. Dulake applied to her gums was actually phages. It is funny that in 2007 I personally was given phages for the successful treatment of a persistent gum infection, but I had to travel many thousands of miles to Tbilisi in Georgia to be offered it! So much for carbon footprints. But I consider it was all worthwhile research for me personally, and for the UK.

In 1945 Myra was in Redhill General Hospital for a month with yellow jaundice, then three weeks convalescing in Scotland.

She loves trying out new diseases, she says, with a laugh.

Myra doesn't consider that she has ever been ill. She has travelled to Canada twice. She is hoping to get to 90, like her mother, and still keep walking, gardening and going up to London for lunches with the International Club for Air Force Officers' Wives - and the sales, of course. She was a guest of her friend Pat at a 617 Dambuster reunion, whose late husband was a Lancaster pilot with this famous squadron. Myra's late husband Nigel was a fighter pilot, and her father had been an army officer in both World Wars. She has had an exciting life here in Reigate. She is sure that, without those wonderful doctors, she would not be alive today. At the age of about 80, with two sticks, Dr.Dulake had made a very memorable observation to her:

"Do you know something, my dear. How the heck you managed to have any children, I do not know. You don't know how ill you were."

We hope that we have quoted that accurately. Just for the record, Claire the tortoise is also still alive and well, at probably 90 years of age - and now, thanks to James, the local pet shop owner, who announced it with a big, beaming smile, we know that Claire is really a Clarence!






Post script

As a Churchill Fellow, I would like to add a note about Winston Churchill's mother Jennie, whom he had described as 'a fairy princess' and 'like the Evening Star'. He called her his 'little bird'. [7] During World War 1, Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill, who was actually American, was Chairman of the Hospital Committee of the American Women's War Relief Fund and toured camps and hospitals playing the piano to accompany a friend who sang. This was to concert pianist standard, as she had been taught by a friend of Chopin. Previously during the Boer War, Jennie had organised an American medical ship, the S.S.Maine. During WW1, she helped organize refreshment canteens at major railway stations in London for the British troops. She became Head Matron at the Lancaster Gate hospital. In 1916, she edited a fascinating publication entitled Women's War Work.[9] She and her family had been frequent visitors to Reigate for country house weekends at Reigate Priory, along with the King, Edward VII, and their many friends in high society.


In 1921 at the age of 67, Lady Randolph Churchill had a dramatic fall downstairs while visiting friends in Somerset. She slipped in her new Italian high heeled shoes, and sustained a fracture of both bones above the ankle.[31] What happened next? The bones were set, but the dreaded gangrene set in. I do not know whether she was given "gangrene medicine discovered during WW1". At that early point of 1921, any wartime discoveries had not been known about by London's medical men. By 10 June a decision was made - to amputate her leg without delay, above the knee. On 29 June, without any warning, the main artery haemorrhaged. Jennie died, with her two sons, Winston and Jack, at her side. Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill are both buried in the churchyard at Bladon near Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire.[7][8] "Winston was bowed, as under the greatest grief of his life," [31] commented her nephew, Shane.


Perhaps it would be Winston's wish that gangrene medicines could be widely available, easily accessible and known about worldwide, please. In September of the following year, 1922, aged 48, just at the time his youngest daughter Mary was born, Winston himself underwent an emergency appendectomy, leaving him tremendously weakened.[32] His ordeal resulted in prolonged convalescence and stopped his participation in the election campaign of that year. Fortunately he regained his strength and lived another 42 years, to lead the country as our Greatest Briton. Although in February 1943, he had to live down the reputation reported in the British and American press that he was the "world's worst patient" - by the October of the same year, he himself became an honorary surgeon, whereas his good friend and ally 'over the pond', President Roosevelt, was an honorary veterinarian! [34]