Sir John Crofton Dies

Sir John Crofton, a pioneering clinician who demonstrated that antibiotics could be safely combined to cure tuberculosis, a dread disease that once killed half the people who contracted it, died on Nov. 3 at his home in Edinburgh. He was 97.

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Sir John started his research in the late 1940s, just as the first antibiotics were entering clinical practice, carrying with them the hope of conquering a disease for which helpless physicians had little to offer besides bed rest. But the mutable tubercle bacillus proved an elusive target, becoming resistant to each successive drug tried. Increasingly, researchers came to believe that drugs alone would never cure tuberculosis.

Rest In Peace, John.