John Farrell Easmon

John Farrell Easmon, MRCS, LM, LKQCP, MD, CMO (30 June 1856 – 9 June 1900), was a prominent Sierra Leonean Creole medical doctor in the British Gold Coast who served as Chief Medical Officer during the 1890s. Easmon was the only West African to be promoted to Chief Medical Officer and he served in this role with distinction during the last decade of the 19th century. Easmon was a botanist and a noted expert on the study and treatment of tropical diseases. In 1884, he wrote a pamphlet entitled The Nature and Treatment of Blackwater Fever, which noted for the first time the relationship between blackwater fever and malaria. Easmon coined the term "blackwater fever" in his pamphlet on the malarial disease.