A young Black chemist named Alice Ball revolutionized the treatment for leprosy, a painful and stigmatized disease. Alice Augusta Ball was one of four children, with two older brothers born into a middle-class family of photographers on July 24th, 1892 in Seattle, WA. Her grandfather, James Presley Ball Sr., was a photographer and one of the first Blacks to use daguerreotypy printing photographs onto metal plates. The Balls lived in Seattle’s Central District where her father, James worked as a lawyer and her mother, Laura as a photographer. As such, Ball was surrounded by fascinating chemical processes as a child, such as the use of mercury vapor to print photos onto iodine-sensitized metal plates.
When she was a child, her family moved to Honolulu in hopes that the warm weather would ease her grandfather’s arthritis. When he died shortly after their arrival, the family quickly returned to Seattle after only a year in Hawaii. After returning to Seattle, Ball attended Seattle High School and graduated in 1910. Alice Ball left Seattle High School after receiving the top grades in the sciences. Alice wanted to go to college. Back then, many Black women worked as domestic servants — few graduated from high school, much less college. Ball went on to study chemistry at the University of Washington. She earned a bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical chemistry in 1912 and a second undergraduate degree in the science of pharmacy two years later in 1914.
Alongside her pharmacy instructor, Williams Dehn, she published a 10-page article, "Benzoylations in Ether Solution," in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Publishing an article in a respected scientific journal was an uncommon accomplishment for a woman and especially for a Black woman at this time. After graduating, Ball was offered many scholarships including an offer from the University of Hawaii. Ball decided to study for a master's degree in chemistry. At the College of Hawaii, her master's thesis involved studying the chemical makeup and active principle of Piper methysticum (kava).
Because of this research and her understanding of the chemical makeup of plants, she was later approached by Dr. Harry Hollman from Kalihi Hospital to study chaulmoogra oil and its chemical properties. He needed an assistant for his research into the treatment of leprosy. At the time, leprosy or Hansen's Disease was a highly stigmatized disease with virtually no chance of recovery. As a result, there was a lot of fear about the disease. People diagnosed were exiled to the Hawaiian island of Molokai with the expectation that they would die there. The best treatment available was chaulmoogra oil, from the seeds of the Hydnocarpus wightianus tree from the Indian subcontinent, which had been used medicinally from as early as the 1300s.
She was asked to investigate the active component of chaulmoogra oil to treat leprosy. At the time, chaulmoogra oil was the best treatment available for Hansen’s disease (leprosy), but had side effects and was almost impossible to use effectively. The oil in its original form was too sticky for topical use and even worse as an injection because the oil would clump under the skin. Ingesting the oil was not practical because it had a putrid taste that made the patients vomit. So for more than six months, she conducted experiments with the oil in the University of Hawaii’s laboratory. Through her work, Ball found a way to create a water-soluble solution of the oil’s active compounds that could be safely injected, with minimal side effects.
In 1915, she shared her findings with Dr. Hollmann and they soon began the process of testing. In less than a year, she discovered a way to create a more productive solution with the active compounds from chaulmoogra oil. Alice Ball had developed a much more effective injectable form! That same year Alice was awarded her Master’s Degree in Chemistry from the University of Hawaii, making her the first Black woman to do so. In Hawaii, people with leprosy were shipped out of sight, marooned on Molokai Island for life with the expectation that they would die there. Most of the isolated were Native Hawaiians. Ball’s scientific rigor resulted in a highly successful method to alleviate leprosy symptoms.
Later known as the “Ball Method,” it was used on thousands of infected individuals for over thirty years until sulfone drugs were introduced. Until the "Ball Method", death was their only relief. The “Ball Method” was so successful, leprosy patients were discharged from hospitals and facilities across the globe. Thanks to Alice Ball, these banished individuals could now return to their families, free from the symptoms of leprosy. Subsequently, she was hired as a chemistry instructor, becoming the first African-American and the first woman to hold this position at the school.
Unfortunately, before she could officially publish her research on “The Ball Method” of isolating the chaulmoogra oil, Alice fell ill. She worked under extreme pressure to produce injectable chaulmooga oil and, according to some observers, became exhausted in the process. She accidentally inhaled chlorine gas while teaching in the laboratory. Ball returned to Seattle and died at the age of 24 on December 31, 1916. It has been suggested that the cause may have been chlorine poisoning due to exposure while teaching in the laboratory. Ball's graduate study advisor, Arthur L. Dean, who was also dean of the college, a chemist with a Ph.D. and later president of the university, was privy to details of the process she developed.
Dean, capitalized on Ball’s research by naming it after himself. By 1921, he began producing large quantities of the injectable chaulmoogra extract and was shipping it around the world. Dean continued her research without giving her credit for the discovery, claiming them as his own. He continued to reap the rewards of Alice’s work. Dean published details of the work and the findings without acknowledging Ball as the originator, or crediting her work. Her name is not mentioned in any of Dean's published works on the chaulmoogra extract, while the name "the Dean method" is appended to the technique.
On New Year’s Day in 1922, six years after her death, Alice Ball finally got the due credit. Dr. Harry T. Hollmann, the assistant surgeon at Kalihi Hospital who originally encouraged Ball to explore chaulmoogra oil, published a paper giving Ball the proper credit she deserved. “The Ball Method,” as it is now rightfully called, was life-saving to leprosy patients. Her method wasn’t a cure, or able to fully halt the disease's progress indefinitely, but it was as close to one as anybody got by 1922. The isolated ethyl ester remained the only available, effective treatment for leprosy. The Ball Method continued to be used for the next 20 years until sulfonamide drugs were developed in the 1940s.
At such a young age she made a huge difference to thousands of people’s lives as her work led to the development of a new and effective treatment for the disease. Alice Ball made the world a better place through her tenacity in the laboratory. During her brief lifetime Ball never received the acknowledgement from the medical world for her groundbreaking work in the cure of Hansen disease. In 2019, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine added her name to the frieze atop its main building, along with Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie, in recognition of their contributions to science and global health research. In 2000, the University of Hawaii-Mānoa placed a bronze plaque in front of a large chaulmoogra tree on campus to honor Alice. February 29th was declared “Alice Ball Day”, which is now celebrated every four years.