After graduating from Seattle High School in 1910, Ball went on to study at the University of Washington, achieving two bachelor’s degrees in pharmaceutical chemistry and the science of pharmacy by 1914. That same year, she co-authored a paper on benzoylations in ether solution that was published in the prestigious Journal of the American Chemical Society, a rare feat for a Black woman at this time.
In 1915, Ball became the first woman and the first African-American person to receive a master’s degree from the College of Hawaii (now known as the University of Hawai’i) and to teach chemistry there. She became the head of the chemistry department later that year. As a postgraduate, she researched the chemical makeup and active ingredients of kava root (Piper methysticum).
It was this work that led Harry T. Hollmann, an assistant surgeon at Kalihi Hospital in Honolulu, to ask Ball to join his team researching treatments for leprosy, a chronic bacterial infection that can lead to skin lesions and nerve damage.
At the time, leprosy (also known as Hansen’s disease) was a highly stigmatised condition. In Hawai’i, people with severe cases were exiled to a facility called Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai, where they were forced to live in isolation until they died. The US novelist Jack London described Kalaupapa as “the pit of hell, the most cursed place on earth”.
The only treatment for the disease at the time was an oil taken from the seeds of the chaulmoogra tree (Hydnocarpus wightianus), a plant native to eastern regions of Asia that had been used in traditional medicine since the 1300s. The application of chaulmoogra oil was extremely difficult – its acrid taste often induced vomiting, while it was hard to use topically because it was too sticky. Injecting the oil was extremely painful and it would often clump under the skin to form blisters.
Credit : New Scientist
Picture Credit : Google
