24 | New Scientist | 18 July 2020
Film
The Ball Method
Dagmawi Abebe
Amazon Video Direct from AugustIN 2000, the World Health
Organization declared that leprosy
had been eliminated as a global
public health problem, due to
effective multi-drug treatments.
It is a disease that has long been
stigmatised due to disfiguration
it can cause. The story of one
unsung hero in the development
of a treatment for leprosy is told
in the short film The Ball Method.
The story starts with archive
footage of the Hawaiian island
of Moloka’i, where thousands
of people with leprosy were
quarantined from 1866 by the
Hawaiian government. Back then,
little was known about the disease
and people feared it was highly
contagious, though we now know
it doesn’t spread very easily.
Countries such as the UK, the
US and India exiled people with
leprosy to remote locations, where
they were left to die. One of the
film’s clips shows a child covered
in sores on his face and hands.
By 1915, when the film is set, one
remedy was beginning to show
promise. We are introduced to
Alice Ball (played by Kiersey
Clemons), a chemistry professor
at the University of Hawaii, as she
visits Kalihi Hospital in Honolulu.
Ball has been enlisted to help
develop a treatment for leprosy by
Dr Harry Hollmann (Kyle Secor)
using the oil from the seeds of the
chaulmoogra tree. Chaulmoogra
oil seemed to work in treating
some cases of leprosy and had
already been used for centuries in
China and India for skin ailments.
Taking the oil orally caused
nausea, so it was administered
by injection. But this methodAlice Ball pioneered leprosy drug development, but she is relatively unknown.
A scientist who claimed her work as his own is partly to blame, finds Gege Liwas flawed. In its unpurified
form, chaulmoogra oil isn’t water
soluble and doesn’t react well with
the body; oil oozes painfully out
of the forearm of one patient with
leprosy as he is given a shot.
In between teaching students at
her university, Ball tries to purify
the oil into chemical compoundscalled ethyl esters so it can be
successfully injected. To do this,
the oil first needs to be converted
into fatty acids. Ball has a eureka
moment. She realises the acid
needs to be frozen overnight to
give enough time for the esters to
separate, as well as to stop them
degrading at room temperature.
Her discovery, the Ball method,
led to the most effective treatment
for leprosy at the time, one thatViews Culture
HA
YE
YUKIOSo Abebe had to make a lot of
choices in how to portray her. He
says he wanted to depict her as
strong and ambitious given the
barriers she is likely to have faced.
Looking at the facts, that doesn’t
seem like much of a stretch. At only
23, Ball was the first woman and
first black American to teach
chemistry and obtain a master’s
degree at the University of Hawaii.
But being a black woman in this
environment wasn’t easy. In one
scene, as Ball takes a class, students
(all male and white) snigger as they
pass around a picture of a crudely-
drawn monkey.
For Abebe, who is originally
from Ethiopia, it was important
to highlight this aspect of Ball’s
experience. “I’m interested in
telling a story where I feel like a lot
of minority stories went untold or
hidden,” he says. This narrative is
at last finding a wider audience. ❚was used until the 1940s, when
a full cure was found. Why, then,
is Alice Ball not more famous?
One reason is that credit wasn’t
given to her at the time. Ball’s
colleague Arthur Dean (played
by Wallace Langham), who was
president of the University of
Hawaii, took her findings as his
own, naming the technique the
Dean method. There was no
mention of Ball in his papers.
She didn’t get credit until 1922
when Hollmann published a
paper detailing her work.
Director Dagmawi Abebe
says this is why he felt it was
so important to make the film.
“When I came across Alice’s
story and saw all the amazing
accomplishments she’s done,
and how not a lot of people even
knew about her, I really wanted
to make that known.”
There are few historical records
about Ball. She didn’t keep a diary
that we know of and died in 1916
aged 24, possibly after inhaling
chlorine gas in a lab accident.Kiersey Clemons plays
chemist Alice Ball, known
for “the Ball method”“ Ball was the first
woman and first
black American at the
University of Hawaii
to teach chemistry”Incredible treatment