Alice Augusta Ball Journey Narrative Women in STEAM

 

Alice Augusta Ball

"I work and work and still it seems that I have done nothing" Alice Augusta Ball's statement in her High School Yearbook.

   Without the acknowledgement of the importance of Alice Augusta Ball’s work was and is to science and her contribution to African American history, sadly, she would have been lost in the long line of history that many people hear nothing about. As stated by Paul Wermager, biographer of Alice Augusta Ball, “Since we cannot bring Alice back to life, the least we can do is tell the story of her life as honestly and thoroughly as possible, so people will know about her outstanding work today and in the future.”

   Alice Augusta Ball was born on July 24, 1892 in Seattle Washington to Laura Louise (Howard) Ball and James Preseley Ball. Alice’s family also included two older brothers and a younger sister. Her family was of the middle class with her father being a lawyer, and a newspaper editor and her mother was a photographer. Interestingly, photography ran in the family because her grandfather, James Ball Sr. was a noted abolitionist and a famous photographer known for daguerreotype, the process of printing photographs onto metal plates. This daguerreotype process may have been one of the reasons Alice pursued Chemistry studies.

As a young child, Alice and her family moved to Hawai'i  for a short period of time in hopes that the warmer climate would help with her grandfather’s arthritis. He passed just a little while after the move and her family relocated back home to Seattle Washington. Seattle is where Alice received her primary education. In high school she received high grades in science and graduated from high school in 1910.

She went on to attend the University of Washington where she received a bachelor’s degree in pharmaceutical chemistry. A couple years later, she earned a second degree in pharmacy. After publishing a 10 page paper to the Journal of American Chemical Society with her pharmacy instructor, titled “Benzoylations in Ether Solution" and graduating, she started receiving many scholarship offers from several universities. It is no short feat how much of a rare and important accomplishment graduating from University and having published a research article is, certainly not an African-American Woman of the time period.  Ultimately, she decided to move back to Hawai'i , and pursue a master’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Hawai'i.

In her graduate studies she focused on the chemical makeup of Kava for her thesis. Kava is a plant native to the Pacific Islands that is in the pepper family. Kava is known for having  medicinal properties. Later Alice was requested to be an assistant to Dr. Harry T. Hollman, who had read her thesis and was impressed by her research work. At the time he was working at Kalihi Hospital in Hawai'i . He reached out to Alice because he needed an assistant who could possibly isolate a compound in a chemical that would hopefully be a better treatment for leprosy. Chaulmoogra oil is what had been used to treat leprosy . However, the treatment had mixed results and there were several problems with it: it was too sticky, it was extremely painful when used as an injection and would form blisters under the skin, and taking it by mouth often made the patients sick. Dr. Hollman did not believe that those results (before Alice’s work) were good enough. At the time leprosy patients were arrested and imprisoned to be placed in isolation away from people, which Dr. Hollman and Alice both wanted to find a more humane treatment to these patients. Therefore, Alice Augusta Ball set out mostly on her own time to research and invent an injectable treatment for leprosy!

At the young age of 23 Alice Ball developed a technique known as the “Ball Method”. This technique allowed for the Chaulmoogra oil from the tree’s seeds to become injectable and absorbable by the human body. The isolation technique was the only effective treatment for Hansen’s Disease, known as leprosy. Unfortunately Alice was unable to publish or take credit for her research solution that saved lives. Alice became very ill after accidentally inhaling chlorine gas during a class at the university. The exact cause of her death is something that is disputed among sources*. Her death certificate states tuberculous, which interestingly is another disease that when her “Ball Method’ was used at the time, one of the two patients treated was cured. In the Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser newspaper her death was cited as an exposure to chlorine gas during a laboratory demonstration. Alice Augusta Ball died on December 31, 1916 in Seattle.

Alice could not take credit for her research, whereby her research and her findings were published by Arthur L. Dean. Dean was the president of the University of Hawai'i  where Alice was working. He took credit for her work and produced large quantities of the injectable chaulmoogra extract. He published findings without giving any credit to Ball. He even went as far as to rename the method to the “Dean Method”. In 1922, Dr. Harry Hollman wrote an article in the medical journal “Archives of Dermatology and Syphilology” to recognize Alice Ball as the true scientist who made the revolutionary discovery and named it “The Ball Method”. Yet it was many decades before Alice was given credit for her work, her discovery, her scientific revolution for saving lives through her genius!

Although Alice’s life was short (1892 - 1916) her contributions were mighty. With only 24  years on earth, she cultivated ground breaking research. The treatment she created remained the preferred method of treatment until the 1940’s. Her work directly impacted the lives of about eight thousand people who had been taken away from their homes and exiled to Hawai'i  because there had been no real cure for the disease. It was nearly 90 years before the University of Hawai'i  recognized her for her work. In 2000, the University of Hawai'i , placed a plaque in her honor on their single Chaulmoogra tree.

Alice is a true pioneer in STEM. She not only developed groundbreaking research but she was the first in several areas: the first African-American woman to earn a masters degree from the University of Hawai'i  and first African-American female chemistry instructor at the same university. She is an inspiration to many. You can do whatever you put your mind to and at any age because it is not about not having enough time but how you spend the time you are given. And with the time Alice Augusta Ball had she discovered a revolutionary medical treatment, saved thousands of lives, positively changed the course of people's lives, and will continue to positively impact the world now and in the future.

Written by: Serenity Givens-Sheets

*According to the African American Registry, she had been demonstrating how to use a Gas mask where she may have been chlorine poised.However her death certificate had been altered to say she died of Tuberculosis, but she did not present symptoms of that. It is widely believed that she died of chlorine inhalation.

Alice Augusta Ball American chemist (1892-1916) Sources Include:

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