Dr. Hideyo Noguchi
Dr. Hideyo Noguchi
Hideyo Noguchi(1876-1928) was a prominent Japanese bacteriologist of legendary stature. In spite of a physical handicap, burn on his left hand during his early childhood and of a lowly family background, he managed to obtain, through extraordinary hard work, a license to practice medicine and became an assistant at the Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory of Tokyo in 1899.(Hideyo Noguchi Memorial Association)
He moved to the United States in 1900 to work with Prof. Simon Flexner at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1904 joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University). He made important studies of snake venoms, of smallpox and yellow-fever vaccines, and of the laboratory diagnosis of trachoma.One of his most important achievements of this period was the successful cultivation of pure Syphilis Spirochaeta in 1911 which brought him to world prominence. He also discovered the presence of Treponema pallidum (syphilitic spirochete) in the brain of a progressive paralysis patient, proving that the spirochete was the cause of the disease in 1913.
In 1918, he traveled extensively throughout Central America and South America to research for a vaccine for such diseases as yellow fever, Oroya fever, poliomyelitis and trachoma which threatened the lives of millions of people of the region in those days.
In 1928, he traveled to Africa to confirm his findings. He tried to demonstrate the hypothesis that yellow fever was caused by spirochete bacteria in stead of a virus. While working in Accra, Ghana, he was struck down by the yellow fever virus, his last words being " I don't understand".
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