Dr. Raphael Armattoe: Renowned Ghanaian doctor who discovered the Abochi drug

Raphael Ernest Grail Armattoe was a renowned Ghanaian doctor, anthropologist, author, poet, and politician. His research into the use of the Abochi drug against human parasites is widely reported in Ghanaian and Ewe sources and is said to have led to his nomination for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948, although some biographical references instead associate his Nobel nomination with Peace rather than Medicine.

Armattoe was born on 12 August 1913 into a prominent Ewe family in Togoland (often associated with Keta in the present‑day Volta Region of Ghana). After the First World War, the former German colony of Togoland was divided into two League of Nations mandates, one under French administration and the other under British administration. Armattoe thus grew up speaking several European languages as well as his native Ewe, and later wrote and published in French, German, and English. After receiving basic education at mission schools, he left home around 1930 to study in Germany, and the rise of Nazism is thought to have prompted his move to further studies in France. While studying in Europe, he met a Swiss woman, Leonie (“Marina”) Schwartz, whom he married.

Having studied anthropology, literature, and medicine in mainland Europe, Armattoe moved with his wife to Edinburgh, where he qualified to practice medicine in the British Isles (graduating in 1938). In Northern Ireland, he secured a position as a locum in Belfast and then was appointed to the Civil Defence First Aid Post in Brooke Park, Derry, where he worked from 1939 to 1945. After the war, Armattoe ran a medical practice from his home on Northland Road and devoted increased time to writing and public speaking on a variety of topics, mostly in anthropology and African history. He often issued copies of his speeches and magazine articles under the imprint of the Lomeshie Research Centre, named after his mother.

Armattoe became more widely known in 1946 when he published his major work The Golden Age of West African Civilization, and he also made newspaper headlines when he claimed that the Russians had developed an atomic bomb the size of a tennis ball. Although he never divulged the source of this information, his statement was put to U.S. President Harry Truman at a press conference, and the president denied any knowledge of such a Russian weapon. The publicity resulted in further speaking engagements for Armattoe, not only in Derry and in Dublin—where he spoke at the Mansion House on “The Advance of Science in the Soviet Union”—but also in Sweden and in the United States.

Armattoe later successfully applied for an anthropological research grant of about £3,000 from the Wenner‑Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and returned to West Africa in 1948 to conduct field research. After roughly half a year of fieldwork, he came back to Derry to write up his reports. Most of the papers published as a result of this research were studies in Ewe physical anthropology, especially mapping the distribution of blood groups, a field that was just then emerging into prominence. He also investigated ancient herbal medicines in County Donegal and collected numerous African plants for study of possible medicinal applications. He presented his findings in 1949, in the same period when he was nominated for a Nobel Prize—variously reported as the Nobel Peace Prize or the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

According to later Ghanaian and Nigerian accounts,

“Dr Armattoe discovered the Abochi drug that saved millions of lives in Africa in the 1940s. It was very efficacious in treating water‑borne diseases, ringworm, and other allied diseases. The patent was bought for thousands of pounds by a Nigerian pharmaceutical interest, and the drug became known as Abochi. His research company was known as the Lomeshie (sometimes rendered Lomoshie) Research Centre/Institute.”

In 1950, the Armattoe family left Derry for Kumasi, in what was then the Gold Coast, where he set up a medical clinic and research centre and also embarked on new adventures in poetry and politics. His two books of poetry, Between the Forest and the Sea and Deep Down in the Black Man’s Mind, continue to attract the interest of students of African literature. His poems about his family and African history are full of love and pride, while many others express his despair and disillusionment with some of the emergent political leadership in the Gold Coast Colony.

Kwame Nkrumah and Armattoe had met at the groundbreaking Fifth Pan‑African Congress in Manchester in 1945. Both strongly supported independence for African nations, but whereas Nkrumah’s vision was more centralist, Armattoe advocated a more federalist approach. Armattoe aligned himself with opposition politics and was associated with the Ghana Congress Party, formed in 1952 amid allegations of corruption within Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party. He also became active in the Joint Togoland Congress, which called for the reunification of the British and French Togoland mandates, in contrast to proposals to unite British Togoland with the Gold Coast Colony.

In 1953, Dr Armattoe travelled to New York to address a United Nations committee on what became known as the “Eweland Question”, advocating for Ewe self‑determination across the divided Togoland regions. On his way back to the Gold Coast, he visited Ireland and Germany. He fell seriously ill en route and was admitted to a hospital in Hamburg, where he died on 22 December 1953, aged just 40.

After receiving news of his death, his wife told friends that her husband had said he believed he had been poisoned, though she did not know by whom, and no formal proof was ever established.

A blue plaque in his honour was unveiled by the Ulster History Circle at 7 Northland Road, Londonderry, where Armattoe lived and had his medical practice between 1939 and 1945.

Acknowledgement: The Commemorative portrait of Dr Raphael Ernest Grail Armattoe (1913–1953) was created with AI support, under Meserette’s direction. Prompt development by “Tylis” (Perplexity) and visual artwork generated by Spruce (ChatGPT).

Source:
http://www.newulsterbiography.co.uk/index.php/home/viewPerson/1865
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Armattoe
http://newsghana.com.gh/ulster-honours-famous-ghanaian-scientist-dr-raphael-ernest-grail-armattoe