Alice Ball. The Woman Who Stopped Leprosy

In 1915, a young chemist from Seattle faced a challenge that medicine considered unsolvable. Alice Ball was only 23 years old when she developed a treatment method for one of the most terrifying diseases of her era. Her story is not only a triumph of science but also a tale of how easily someone’s contribution can be erased from the pages of history.

The Path to Scientific Breakthrough

When Alice Augusta Ball arrived in Hawaii in 1914, the era of scientific colonialism was in full swing. Universities across the United States were just beginning to open doors to women and people of color, though these openings remained symbolic. Ball broke through a double barrier: as the first African American woman to earn a master’s degree at the University of Hawaii, she then stood before the blackboard as the first woman teaching chemistry at the institution.

Her earlier education in Seattle laid the groundwork for this achievement. At the University of Washington, she completed two degrees – pharmaceutical chemistry and pharmacy – at a time when most universities considered women unsuited for laboratory work. This dual specialization proved crucial for her future research.

Ball’s master’s thesis on the chemical composition of kava (Piper methysticum) demonstrated her exceptional ability to analyze plant compounds. It was precisely this competence that earned her a fellowship and an assignment that would change the history of medicine.

Chaulmoogra Oil and the Riddle of Leprosy

Hansen’s disease, commonly known as leprosy, was a sentence to social death in the early twentieth century. Patients were isolated on remote islands, and medicine could offer no effective treatment. Chaulmoogra oil had been used for centuries in Asian medicine, but its thick consistency made effective administration impossible.

Ball faced a strictly chemical problem: how to extract the active compounds from the oil in a form that would allow the medicine to be injected? In the pre-antibiotic era, such a challenge required deep understanding of organic and pharmaceutical chemistry. The method she developed – isolating the ethyl ester from the oil’s fatty acids – was revolutionary in its simplicity and effectiveness.

In 1918, two years after her death, Kalihi Hospital on Molokai discharged 78 patients deemed cured. This was a revolution on a scale that tropical medicine had never witnessed before. The Ball method remained the standard therapy for a quarter century.

Stolen Recognition

Arthur L. Dean, a chemist and future president of the University of Hawaii, took over Ball’s research after her sudden death in December 1916. The young scientist died at age 24 – officially from tuberculosis, though much evidence points to chlorine poisoning during laboratory work. Dean published her discovery under his own name, calling it the „Dean method.”

Such practices were nothing unusual in those times. Academia functioned according to rules that favored white men with established positions. Intellectual theft from young scientists, women, and people of color constituted an unwritten norm of the system.

Only in 1922 did Dr. Harry T. Hollmann restore justice by publishing an article revealing the true authorship of the method. However, the University of Hawaii remained silent for another 85 years, as if acknowledging a past error were a greater shame than committing it in the first place.

Belated Memory

The year 2000 brought the first official attempt to rectify this historical injustice. Lieutenant Governor Mazie Hirono established February 29 as „Alice Ball Day” – a symbolic choice of a date that appears only once every four years, as if emphasizing the exceptional nature of the achievement. Seven years later, the university finally awarded Ball the Medal of Distinction and unveiled a commemorative plaque.

In 2022, more than a hundred years after her death, Alice Ball was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. This recognition came in an era when science began to reckon with its own history of exclusions and omissions. Her story reminds us how many talents may have vanished from the pages of history simply because the system was not ready to notice them.

The Ball method worked until 1940, when sulfonamides were invented. During those 25 years, it saved thousands of people condemned to isolation and suffering. The question of how many more such discoveries were attributed to the wrong people remains unanswered.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

• https://www.osgf.org/blog/2021/2/10/alice-ball-and-chaulmoogra-oil
• https://daily.jstor.org/the-chemist-whose-work-was-stolen-from-her/
• https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2023/04/11/overlooked-no-more-alice-ball-chemist-who-created-a-treatment-for-leprosy/
• https://www.unsw.edu.au/science/about-us/equity-diversity-inclusion/science-history-profiles/alice-ball
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Alice-Ball