Sir William Boog LeishmanDied 2 Jun 1926 at age 60 (born 6 Nov 1865).British physician who studied tropical diseases in India (1890-97) as an army officer. In 1900, he determined a protozoon to be the disease agent for kala-azar, a disease now sometimes known as leishmaniasis. Later, he developed a vaccine against typhoid fever used during WW I that was believed to have reduced the incidence of the disease. Kala Azar or Black Fever probably existed for centuries in Bengal and China, but the first recognized outbreak was in Jessore, India (1824). It caused the deaths of 750,000 people in 3 years. His first original contribution to science was the development of an easy method to stain blood for malaria parasites, to examine cells from the spleen of a soldier who had died of kala-azar. It is still used today. |
