William Boog Leishman
William Boog Leishman | |
|---|---|
 Sir William Boog Leishman | |
| Born | 6 November 1865 Glasgow, Scotland |
| Died | 2 June 1926 (aged 60) London, England |
| Buried | |
| Allegiance |  United Kingdom |
| Service |  British Army |
| Years of service | 1887–1926 |
| Rank | Lieutenant-General |
| Commands | Director General Army Medical Services |
| Battles / wars | North-West Frontier First World War |
| Awards | Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George Knight Bachelor Mentioned in Despatches (3) Legion of Honour (France) Army Distinguished Service Medal (United States) |
Lieutenant-General Sir William Boog Leishman, KCB, KCMG, FRS (/ˈliːʃmən/, 6 November 1865 – 2 June 1926) was a Scottish pathologist and British Army medical officer. He was Director-General of Army Medical Services from 1923 to 1926.[1]
Biography
[edit]
Leishman was born in Glasgow and attended Westminster School and the University of Glasgow and entered the Royal Army Medical Corps. He served in India, where he did research on enteric fever and kala-azar. He returned to the United Kingdom and was stationed at the Victoria Hospital in Netley in 1897. In 1900 he was made Assistant Professor of Pathology in the Army Medical School, and described a method of staining blood for malaria and other parasites—a modification and simplification of the existing Romanowsky method using a compound of methylene blue and eosin, which became known as Leishman's stain.
In 1901, while examining pathologic specimens of a spleen from a patient who had died of kala azar (now called "visceral leishmaniasis"), he observed oval bodies and published his account of them in 1903. Charles Donovan of the Indian Medical Service independently found such bodies in other kala azar patients, and they are now known as Leishman–Donovan bodies (not to be confused with Donovan bodies, which are found in Granuloma inguinale, which is caused by Klebsiella granulomatis) and recognized as the protozoan that causes kala azar, Leishmania donovani.
Leishman's name was engraved into the history of parasitology by Sir Ronald Ross, who was impressed by Leishman's work and classified the etiologic agent of kala azar into the separate genus Leishmania. The parasitic organisms from this genus were described earlier by Peter Borovsky in 1892.[2]
Leishman also helped elucidate the life cycle of Spirochaeta duttoni, which causes African tick fever, and, with Almroth Wright, helped develop an effective anti-typhoid inoculation.
He was president of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 1911–1912 and Director General of the Army Medical Services from 1923 to 1926.
He is buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.
Recognition
[edit]Leishman's name features on the Frieze of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Twenty-three names of public health and tropical medicine pioneers were chosen to feature on the School building in Keppel Street when it was constructed in 1926.[3]
A memorial fund was instituted by subscriptions raised in memory of him and the Leishman Memorial Prize is now awarded annually for work in any branch of medicine, surgery, allied sciences or general duties of the RAMC or RADC.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]
- ^ "Obituary Notices of Fellows Deceased-William Boog Leishman". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 102 (720). The Royal Society: i–xxvii. 2 April 1928. doi:10.1098/rspb.1928.0019. JSTOR 81250.
- ^ Cox F. E. G. (October 2002). "History of Human Parasitology". Clin Microbiol Rev. 15 (4). American Society for Microbiology: 595–612. doi:10.1128/CMR.15.4.595-612.2002. PMC 126866. PMID 12364371.
- ^ "Behind the Frieze". LSHTM. Archived from the original on 22 February 2017. Retrieved 21 February 2017.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
- 1865 births
- 1926 deaths
- Medical doctors from Glasgow
- Scottish parasitologists
- Scottish military medical officers
- 20th-century Scottish inventors
- Scottish pathologists
- Alumni of the University of Glasgow
- People educated at Westminster School, London
- British Army lieutenant generals
- Burials at Highgate Cemetery
- Royal Army Medical Corps officers
- Fellows of the Royal Society
- Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath
- Knights Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George
- Knights Bachelor
- Foreign recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States)
- Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
- Military personnel from Glasgow
- Presidents of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene