Poindexter, Hildrus A. | My World of Reality

First edition, first printing. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Mr. and Mrs. John L. Telford, you now have a most interesting world and many new problems, try to solve some of them. Hildrus A. Poindexter, July 20th, 1980”. The identity of the recipients is unclear. An exceptional copy, the boards and jacket bright and fresh.

Born near Memphis, Tennessee in 1901, Hildrus A. Poindexter (1901-1987) decided at the age of five that he would become a doctor. He worked his way through school, teaching himself Latin, Greek, and algebra. He specialised in tropical medicine and received his MD from Harvard in 1927, followed by his PhD in microbiology and immunology at Columbia in 1932.

Between 1931 and 1943 Poindexter taught bacteriology, preventative medicine, and public health at Howard University, then served for three years as a U.S. Army physician in the South Pacific, New Guinea, the Philippines, and occupied Japan. Later tours of duty took him to Liberia, Vietnam, Surinam, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Jamaica, and Sierra Leone. “In all of these assignments, he used his knowledge of tropical medicine in efforts to improve the poor health situation of the citizens of these countries” (Krapp, Notable Black American Scientists, p. 253).

“Poindexter’s importance as a medical researcher lies in his careful scientific observations of the many tropical diseases he encountered in his foreign duty posts and the very extensive reports he wrote concerning his findings. He often suggested possible medications to eliminate or alleviate the diseases, which were sometimes based upon his own field experiments. these reports served as valuable raw data upon which other scientists and public health physicians could base their own research” (Krapp, p. 253).