The story of Alice Augusta Ball, a 24-year-old African American chemist who unknowingly turned the medical world on its head, is intrinsically tied to two of the less desirable elements often skirting society’s dark underbelly: racism and misogyny.
For 60 years Ball’s story lay locked away, the truth of her discovery hidden behind the face of another — a man named Arthur Dean.
Challenge leads to discovery
While most women, especially women of color, were being denied access to education, Ball was not taking “no” for an answer.
Accepted at the University of Washington, she earned two bachelor’s degrees, one in pharmaceutical chemistry and the other in pharmacy. She also earned a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii, becoming the first woman and black woman to have ever done so from the college, at the age of 23.
In 1915, while at the University of Hawaii at Honolulu, her thesis research on treating Leprosy was brought to the attention of Dr. Harry Hollmann, who specialized in treating patients with the disease. Enamored with her work, Hollman issued a challenge to the young woman—could she make the only known cure for the disease, Chaulmoogra oil, work?
His isolation wards were full of suffering people who had lost everything they held dear — their health, touch from loved ones, their lives — and the doctor saw promise in the talented Ball’s research.
At the time, the only known cure for Leprosy, or Hansen’s Disease was Chaulmoogra Oil, a thick oil extracted from the seeds of tropical trees.
Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease caused by a bacteria called Mycobacterium leprae. The illness causes wasting away of the skin, and damage to the upper respiratory tract, eyes, and peripheral nerves. Fearing the disease’s lack of a viable cure, infected individuals were forced to live in self-isolation — locked away from their loved ones and the former lives they once knew.
Proving the only salve, chaulmoogra oil was considered by many sufferers to almost be worse than the disease. The oil caused violent nausea when ingested, leading very little of the medicine to be absorbed by the patient. The oil was almost too thick to inject and caused painful lumps to bubble up under the skin.
From her research, Ball knew without Dr. Hollmann having to tell her, all who had come before her trying to solve this impossible problem — how to get the treatment to the patient — had failed.
Up for the challenge, Ball headed to the lab and immediately began tinkering.
She started by isolating the oils active compounds, using the ethyl esters of the fatty acids to develop a groundbreaking technique that made the oil both water-soluble and injectable!
For the first time, thanks to Ball’s work, patients were treated, getting better, and finally able to see a day they thought would never come — leaving isolation.
An untimely death and betrayal
Months after her discovery, in December 1916, Alice Ball suddenly died.
At only 24, tragedy suddenly befell the young genius, and no one could say why.
Some have theorized she may have been adversely affected by her work in the lab or suffered from an unknown underlying illness.
Unfortunantly, Ball never published her work.
Because she did not publicize her work before her death, Ball’s cure lay forgotten, buried in her laboratory notes and early findings, until President of the University, Arthur Dean, happened upon them one day. Realizing their potential, he re-worded and slightly adjusted Ball’s technique before sharing them with the world, published under his own name in 1917.
The world collectively celebrated Dean.
His new method for curing Hansen’s Disease was briefly called the “Ball Method,” before soon becoming known by the household name of the “Dean Method.”
For the next few decades, the Dean Method would rule the medical world—bringing treatment for Leprosy to underprivilege areas around the globe such as the Philippines, Asia, Africa, and locations across the Pacific. Many lives were saved, families reunited, and Dean received praise, all without crediting the student whose work he stole.
In 1920, Dr. Hollmann attempted to set the record straight by writing a paper that publicly credited Ball for her contributions, though it did little to correct the wrong.
No one really questioned the undisputed Dean Method until 1977 when researchers uncovered Ball’s thesis and began investigating.
Once dots were connected and timelines synchronized and scrutinized, Dean’s theft of his deceased student’s work became obvious.
Dr. Arthur Lyman Dean died on March 1, 1952, never answering for his crimes or explaining the theft.
But with recognition came change.
Robbed no more, Alice Ball’s name was added to textbooks and historians changed the record to reflect the truth of her discovery.
Though Seattle born, Alice Ball is honored posthumously with a plaque beneath the campus of the University of Hawaii’s lone oil tree.
Another honor bestowed on Ball by the state of Hawaii— the Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii named February 29th, Leap Day, as Alice Ball Day during a ceremony attended by over 150 people in 2000. She was also posthumously bestowed the university’s Medal of Distinction in 2007 — the highest honor the college can award.
Legacy
A man believed he could erase the discovery of a young woman simply because she was deceased, a woman, and an easy target because in life Ball was already marginalized by society due to the color of her skin and her gender.
Yet Ball’s brightness refused to be dimmed even by death.
For six decades her work was stolen — but her name was never meant to stay lost.
Alice Augusta Ball’s method is currently taught in medical schools across the globe and chemistry students are now studying her work.
Her life filled with so much promise, Alice Ball’s high school yearbook quote was, “I work and work, and still it seems I have nothing done.”
Ball’s last lessons are perhaps her most poignant: erasure is real, it disproportionately affects people of color, and one person can upend the world.