Hideyo Noguchi
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Hideyo Noguchi (野口 英世 Noguchi Hideyo, November 9, 1876 - May 21, 1928) was a prominent Japanese bacteriologist who discovered the agent of syphilis disease in 1911.
He was born in Inawashiro, Fukushima in 1876 under the name Seisaku Noguchi (野口清作 Noguchi Seisaku). When he was one and a half years old he fell down into a fireplace and suffered a burn injury on his left hand. In 1883 he entered Mitsuwa elementary school. Thanks to the generous contribution from his teacher Kobayashi and his friends, he was able to receive surgery on his badly burned left hand. He recovered about 70% of mobility and functionality of his left hand through the operation. He made the decision to become a doctor and help those in need. Seisaku then apprenticed himself to Dr. Kanae Watanabe (渡部鼎 Watanabe Kanae), the same doctor who had performed surgery on his hand. He passed the exam to practice medicine when he was twenty years-old. He had prodigality and received Dr. Morinosuke Chiwaki's economic gifts in young days.
In 1898 he changed his name to Hideyo Noguchi.
In 1900 he moved to United States, where he got a job as a research assistant. At this time his work concerned poisonous snakes. In part his move was motivated by difficulties in obtaining a medical position in Japan, as prospective employers were concerned about the impact the hand deformity would have on potential patients.
In 1913 he demonstrated 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 1928, he died while he was working on yellow fever in Accra, Ghana.[1] According to the H2G2 project on BBC [1], he was testing the hypothesis that Yellow Fever was caused by spirochaete bacteria instead of a virus. While working in Accra he was struck down by the Yellow Fever virus, his last words being "I don't understand".
His portrait has been printed on Japanese 1000 yen bill since 2004. The house where he was born and brought up is preserved and is part of a museum to his life and its achievements.
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