Hansen’s disease, also called leprosy, is curable today – thanks in part to the interesting tree and the pioneering work of a young scientist in the Nineteen Twenties. Centuries before its discovery, there was no cure for the debilitating symptoms of leprosy and its social stigma.
This young scientist Alicja Bal, laid the foundations for the world’s first effective treatment for leprosy. However, her legacy continues to prompt conversations about the marginalization of girls and folks of color in science today.
How bioethicist and historian of medicationI even have examine Ball’s contributions to medicine and I’m pleased to see that she is increasingly recognized for her work, especially in a disease that is still stigmatized.
Who was Alice Ball?
Alice Augusta Ball, born in Seattle, Washington in 1892, was first woman and first African American to acquire a master’s degree in science from the College of Hawaii in 1915, after graduating in pharmaceutical chemistry the previous yr.
After completing her master’s degree, the university hired her as a chemist and instructor, making her the first African American woman to carry this degree in the chemistry department.
Impressed with his master’s thesis in chemistry kava plantBall was recruited by Dr. Harry Hollmann of the U.S. Public Health Service leprosy investigation station in Hawaii. Then, leprosy was a major public health problem in Hawaii.
Doctors now understand that leprosy, also called Hansen’s disease, is minimally contagious. However, in 1865, the fear and stigma related to leprosy led Hawaiian authorities to implement a policy of mandatory segregation that ultimately isolated individuals with the disease. a distant peninsula on the island of Molokai. In 1910 There were over 600 individuals with leprosy in Molokai.
These policies overwhelmingly affected the Native Hawaiians who constituted over 90% of all those exiled to Molokai.
Meaning of chaulmoogra oil
Doctors tried almost every possible treatment to treat leprosy, even experimenting with dangerous substances equivalent to arsenic and strychnine. But the only consistently effective treatment was chaulmoogra oil.
Chaulmoogra oil is obtained from seeds chaulmoogra tree. Healthcare employees in India and Burma has used this oil for centuries as a medicine for various skin diseases. However, the treatment had limitations and had only a marginal effect on leprosy.
The oil could be very thick and viscous, making it difficult to rub into the skin. The drug can also be very bitter and patients who consumed it often began to vomit. Some doctors have experimented with oil injections, but this they produced painful pimples.
George McGlashan Kerr, CC BY
Ball method
If scientists could harness the healing potential of chaulmoogra without the unpleasant uncomfortable side effects, the tree’s seeds could revolutionize the treatment of leprosy. So Hollmann turned to Ball. In an article from 1922Hollmann documents how the 23-year-old Ball discovered the best way to chemically adapt chaulmoogra into an injection that caused no uncomfortable side effects.
The Ball method, as Hollmann called her discovery, transformed chaulmoogra oil into the simplest cure for leprosy until introduction of sulfones in the late Nineteen Forties.
In 1920, 78 patients in Honolulu were cured using the Ball Method. A yr later, 94 more were treated The Public Health Service took note of this the morale of all patients improved dramatically. For the first time there was hope for a cure.
Tragedy, Ball he did not have a likelihood to brag over this achievementas she died inside a yr at the age of only 24, possibly from exposure chlorine gas in the lab.
Ball’s legacy, lost and located
Ball’s death meant she had no opportunity to publish her research. Arthur Dean, chairman of the College of Hawaii’s chemistry department, took over the project.
Dean mass-produced the treatment and published a series of articles on chaulmoogra oil. He modified the name of the Ball method to the “Dean Method” i he never credited Ball for her work.
Ball’s other colleagues did try to guard Ball’s legacy. A 1920 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association praises Ball’s method, while Hollmann explicitly credits Ball in his 1922 article.
The ball is described in detail in Article from 1922 in volume 15, issue 5, Current History, an educational publication on international affairs. This feature is taken from: a June 1941 issue “Negro History Bulletin” by Carter G. Woodson, referring to Ball’s achievements and premature death.
Joseph Duttona respected religious volunteer in the leper settlements of Molokai, he further referred to Ball’s work in Widely published memoirs from 1932 for a popular audience.
Historians like Paweł Wermager it later led to a modern reckoning with Ball’s mistreatment by Dean and others, ensuring that Ball received proper recognition for her work. Following the work of Wermager et al., University of Hawaii honored the Ball in 2000 with a bronze badgeattached to the last remaining chaulmoogra tree on campus.
In 2019, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine added Ball’s name outside his constructing. Ball’s story was even featured in a 2020 short film, “Ball method”
Ball’s method represents each a scientific achievement and a history of marginalization. The young woman of color pioneered the treatment of a highly stigmatizing disease that disproportionately affected already disenfranchised indigenous people.
In 2022, then-Gov. David Ige declared February twenty eighth as Alice Augusta Prom Day in Hawaii. It was the only thing that fit Ceremony took place on the Mānoa campus in the shade of the chaulmoogra tree.
