Dr. Jack M. Blount (1910-2003) was an American physician, who prior to entering medical school acquired disabling rheumatoid arthritis.  He experimented on himself and cured himself, using anti-parasitic medications; and believed the limax amoeba caused rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. Wyburn-Mason had reported as early as 1920 that the limax amoeba was found in tissue, in more than one hundred chronic diseases, in all cases of collagen and autoimmune diseases, and in all cases of leukemia and lymphoma.

The medical board did not like Dr. Blount treating rheumatoid arthritis as a parasitic infection, and threatened to take away his medical license if he continued to treat and cure patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The Board sent an undercover rheumatoid arthritis patient to entrap Dr. Blount and prove he was violating the Board agreement.  Dr. Blount was called back to the Board; however, in the end he prevailed.  He and Dr. Wyburn-Mason eventually established the Roger Wyburn-Mason and Jack M Blount Foundation for the Eradication of Rheumatoid Disease, and Dr. Blount claimed to have cured more than 16,000 patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

In 2017, a new edition of Dr. Anthony Di Fabio’s book, Rheumatoid Diseases: Cured at Last, published by their Foundation, expanded on the story of Dr. Blount, and said many different infectious pathogens can cause rheumatoid arthritis.  In retrospect, the anti-parasitic drugs used by Dr. Blount to treat the limax amoeba also treated other pathogens capable of causing rheumatoid arthritis.

Dr. Blount was criticized, ridiculed, and persecuted, like so many doctors through the ages who professed revolutionary ideas and sought new creative ways to help patients.  The fear of new ideas and rigid adherence to the old ways is preventing progress and is holding medicine back.