Cm's video: Hideyo Noguchi

Hideyo Noguchi ( Noguchi Hideyo, November 9, 1876 – May 21, 1928), also known as Seisaku Noguchi (Noguchi Seisaku), was a prominent Japanese bacteriologist who in 1911 discovered the agent of syphilis as the cause of progressive paralytic disease. Early life. Noguchi Hideyo was born in Inawashiro, Fukushima prefecture in 1876. When he was one and a half years old, he fell into a fireplace and suffered a burn injury on his left hand. There was no doctor in the small village, but one of the men examined the boy. "The fingers of the left hand are mostly gone," he said, "and the left arm, the left foot, and the right hand are burned; I don't know how badly." In 1883, Noguchi entered Mitsuwa elementary school. Thanks to generous contributions from his teacher Kobayashi and his friends, he was able to receive surgery on his badly burned hand. He recovered about 70% mobility and functionality in his left hand through the operation. Noguchi decided to become a doctor to help those in need. He apprenticed himself to Dr. Kanae Watanabe , the same doctor who had performed the surgery. He entered Saisei Gakusha, which later became Nippon Medical School. He passed the examinations to practice medicine when he was twenty years old in 1897. He showed signs of great talent and was supported in his studies by Dr. Morinosuke Chiwaki. In 1898, he changed his first name to Hideyo after reading a novel about a doctor who had the same name—Seisaku—as him. The doctor in the story was intelligent like Noguchi but became lazy and ruined his life. Career. In 1900 Noguchi travelled on the America Maru to the United States, where he obtained a job as a research assistant with Dr. Simon Flexner at the University of Pennsylvania and later at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research. He thrived in this environment. At this time his work concerned venomous snakes. In part, his move was motivated by difficulties in obtaining a medical position in Japan, as prospective employers were concerned that his hand deformity would discourage potential patients. In a research setting, he did not have a handicap. He and his peers learned from their work and from each other. In this period, a fellow research assistant in Flexner's lab was Frenchman Alexis Carrel, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize in 1912. Noguchi's work later attracted the Prize committee's scrutiny. In the 21st century, the Nobel Foundation archives were opened for public inspection and research. Historians found that Noguchi was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: in 1913-1915, 1920, 1921 and 1924-1927. During the 1920s, his work was being increasingly criticized for inaccuracies. While working at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in 1911, he was accused of inoculating orphan children with syphilis in the course of a clinical study. He was acquitted of any wrongdoing at the time but, since the late 20th century, his conduct of the study has come to be considered an early instance of unethical human experimentation. At the time, society had not developed a consensus about how to conduct human experimentation and feelings varied about the medical research community. Antivivisectionists linked their concerns for animals with concerns about humans. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded in the late 19th century after the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In 1913, Noguchi 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. Dr. Noguchi's name is remembered in the binomial attached to another spirochete, Leptospira noguchii. In 1918, Noguchi traveled extensively in Central America and South America working with the International Health Board to conduct research to develop a vaccine for yellow fever, and to research Oroya fever, poliomyelitis and trachoma. He believed that yellow fever was caused by spirochaete bacteria instead of a virus. He worked for much of the next ten years trying to prove this theory. His work on yellow fever was widely criticized as taking an inaccurate approach that was contradictory to contemporary research, and confusing yellow fever with other pathogens. In 1927-28 three different papers appeared in medical journals that discredited his theories. It turned out he had confused yellow fever with leptospirosis. The vaccine he developed against "yellow fever" was successfully used to treat the latter disease. Human experimentation scandal In 1911 and 1912 at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City, Noguchi