DR.

RAPHAEL ERNEST GRAIL ARMATTOE

Raphael Ernest Grail Armattoe was born on 12th August 1913 and died on 22nd December 1953. He
was born at Keta in the Volta Region. He was a Ghanaian medical doctor, author, poet and politician.
He was nominated for the 1949 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology and was a campaigner for
unification of British and French Togoland. He was called by the New York Post "the ‘Irishman' from
West Africa", and the BBC producer Henry Swanzy referred to him as the "African Paracelsus. He was
fluent in German, French and English. He also spoke his native Ewe language. After his basic education
in the Gold Coast, he left for Germany in 1930 for further studies. Most of his tertiary education was in
Germany and France. He left Germany for France due to rising Nazism and continued his studies in
anthropology, literature and Medicine.
He later moved to Edinburgh, where he qualified to practice Medicine. He got a locum job
in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and following that worked at the Civil Defence first-aid post in Brooke
Park, Derry, between 1939 and 1945. After the Second World War, he opened a medical practice at his
home on Northland Road in Derry. He later became the director of a research institute. He discovered
the Abochi drug that saved millions of lives in Africa in the 1940s by treating water-borne diseases,
ringworms, and other related diseases. His research into the use of the Abochi drug led to his
nomination for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948. 
He was also involved with writing and giving talks, especially relating to anthropology. He was
described by some who knew him as a marvellous doctor and a good speaker. He also loved poetry. His
first collection of poems was Between the Forest and the Sea (1950). His next collection, Deep Down in
the Black Man's Mind, was published in 1954, after his death. As a politician with the Ghana Congress
Party, he campaigned for the unification of the Ewe people that have been divided by colonial powers
into British Togoland, the southern part of the Gold Coast and French Togoland.  He was also active
with the Togoland Congress.